CM 

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A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 


BOOKS    BY    WILL    H.    LOW 

PUBLISHED    BY    CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

A  Painter's  Progress.     Illustrated  .  net    $1.50 
A    Chronicle    of    Friendships.      Illus- 
trated   net    $3.00 


06 

03 


1 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

BEING 

A  PARTIAL  SURVEY  ALONG  THE  PATHWAY 
OF  ART  IN  AMERICA  AND  EUROPE  WITH 
SUNDRY  EXAMPLES  AND  PRECEPTS  CULLED 
FROM  PERSONAL  ENCOUNTER  WITH 
EXISTING  CONDITIONS  AND  REFERENCE 
TO  THE  CAREERS  OF  MANY  ARTISTS  BOTH 
ANCIENT  AND  MODERN:  SIX  DISCOURSES 
FORMING  THE  FIFTH  ANNUAL  SERIES  OF 

THE  SCAMMON  LECTURES 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  ART  INSTITUTE 
OF  CHICAGO,  APRIL,  1910,  BY 


WILL  H.  LOW 

u 


WITH  SIXTEEN  ILLUSTRATIONS 
SELECTED    BY    THE    AUTHOR 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK    *    *    *    *    MCMX 


Copyright,  1910,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
Published  October,  1910 


To 
MARY  FAIRCHILD  LOW 


'  This  is  the  life  we  have  chosen ;  well,  the 
choice  was  mad,  but  I  should  make  it  again' 


255910 


NOTE 

THE  papers  herewith  printed  formed  the  fifth 
of  the  series  of  lectures  given  under  the  Scam- 
mon  Foundation  before  the  students  and  mem- 
bers of  the  Art  Institute  of  Chicago.  By  bequest 
of  Mrs.  Maria  Sheldon  Scammon.  the  Scammon 
Lectures  were  established  on  a  permanent  basis 
in  1901  in  memory  of  Mr.  John  Young  Scam- 
mon, a  former  prominent  citizen  of  Chicago. 
The  will  prescribes  that  these  lectures  shall  be 
on  "the  history,  theory,  and  practice  of  the  fine 
arts  (meaning  thereby,  the  graphic  and  plastic 
arts),  by  persons  of  distinction  or  authority 
on  the  subject  of  which  they  lecture." 
As  here  presented,  these  lectures  have  been  re- 
vised as  little  as  is  consistent  with  the  demands 
of  formal  publication,  from  a  desire  to  retain  as 
nearly  as  possible  their  character  of  familiar 
talks  by  an  elder  to  a  group  of  younger  artists. 

W.  H.  L. 

Lawrence  Park,  Bronxville, 
September,  1910. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION  ....  1 

II.    THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST     ...  55 

HI.    THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT     .    .    .  102 

IV.    EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD      .     .  146 

V.    THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD    .  198 

VI.    OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE    .  251 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"Prosperity  Under  the  Law":  Decorative  panel 
in  Luzerne  County  Court-House,  Wilkes- 
Barre,  Pa.,  by  Will  H.  Low,  1909  Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

E.  D.  Palmer 34 

From  a  photograph,  1868. 

"Peace  in  Bondage,"  bas-relief  by  E.  D.  Palmer, 
1863,  now  in  possession  of  Albany  Art  and 
Historical  Society 42 

"  Coasting  by  Moonlight,"  early  drawing  by  Will 

H.  Low,  1870 48 

PaulBaudry 60 

From  a  photograph. 

"The  Glorification  of  the  Law":  Ceiling  decora- 
tion by  Paul  Baudry  in  the  Cour  de  Cassa- 
tion, Paris 70 

"Diana  Repulsing  Love,"  by  Paul  Baudry,  1882      80 

Mme.  Bernstein  and  her  son,  Robert,  by  Paul 

Baudry 82 

[xi] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING  PAGE 

"The  Last  Cat  in  Paris,"  drawing  by  Sol  Eytinge 

from  sketch  by  Will  H.  Low,  1871      .     .     .     114 

"The  Rocky  Mountains,"  by  Albert  Bierstadt, 
in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  New 
York 134 

"CEdipus,"  by  Ingres,  in  the  Louvre  Museum    .     162 

"Portrait  of  a  Marine  Officer,"  by  J.  F.  Millet,  in 

the  Museum  at  Rouen 192 

"A  Wisconsin  Pastoral,"  by  Theodore  Robinson, 

1880,  in  possession  of  the  author     ....     228 

"Skipper  Ireson,"  by  Will  H.  Low,  1880-81,  now 
in  possession  of  Albany  Art  and  Historical 
Society 234 

"The  Pearl  Necklace,"  by  Ver  Meer  of  Delft, 

in  the  Berlin  Museum 244 

"The  Court  of  Honor,"  World's  Columbian  Ex- 
position, Chicago,  1893 266 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

\VHEN  one  whose  life  from  his  earliest 
years  has  been  devoted  to  art  is  called 
from  the  preoccupation  of  active  produc- 
tion to  prepare  a  series  of  lectures  upon 
some  theme  connected  with  the  "history, 
theory,  and  practice  of  the  fine  arts,"  the 
comprehensive  programme — to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  elasticity  of  the  catholic  mind 
— suggests  at  once  a  score  of  subjects. 
The  modern  artist  is  the  heir  of  the  ages. 
Since  the  world  began  a  certain  type  of 
man  has  been  active  with  the  desire  to 
depict  upon  a  plane  surface,  or  to  mould 
in  some  material,  images  of  the  life  to 
[i] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

which  our  eyes  open  with  the  dawn  of  in- 
telligence. Consequently  in  painting  and 
sculpture  alone  there  are  vast  stores  of 
what  we  classify  as  manifestations  of  art, 
which  we  have  subdivided  into  works  of 
schools  or  epochs,  as  this  first  instinctive 
effort  of  man  has  taken  form;  each  pos- 
sessing significance  to  the  generation  of 
to-day,  after  their  original  appeal  to  the 
contemporary  world  for  which  they  were 
fashioned.  Three  primary  colours,  or  a 
mass  of  ductile  clay,  have  sufficed  for 
the  production  of  the  greatest  as  of  the 
least  of  these;  when  these  simple  mate- 
rials have  been  vitalised  by  the  touch  of 
a  hand  informed  with  the  receptive  qual- 
ity, partly  intuitive,  partly  intellectual — 
which  we  recognise  as  the  artistic  tem- 
perament. 

But,  if  these  simple  means  of  produc- 
tion have  varied  little  since  art  began,  the 
product  is  so  various  that  the  embarrass- 
ment of  choice  is  manifest.  No  matter  how 

[2] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

little  one  may  specialise,  a  life  of  active 
work  precludes  the  possibility  of  thorough 
familiarity  with  the  entire  field  of  art,  and 
it  is  only  here  and  there,  and  as  the  fruit- 
ful yield  may  serve  his  purposes,  that  the 
busy  artist  may  glean  or  can  in  turn 
make  profitable  the  garnered  harvest  to 
others;  first,  and  most  legitimately,  by 
the  exercise  of  his  craft,  and  secondly 
through  the  medium  of  words.  In  this  the 
artist  differs  from  the  critic,  whose  equip- 
ment pretends  to  embrace  all  phases,  all 
schools,  and  all  epochs  of  art,  to  reduce 
to  order  the  vast  differences  that  conflict- 
ing ideals  have  engendered,  and  to  prove 
by  the  whole  long  history  of  art  a  sequen- 
tial and  logical  theory.  Leaving  aside  all 
question  of  the  number  of  critics  who 
have  succeeded  in  such  a  task,  it  may  be 
granted  at  once  that  the  convictions  born 
of  practice  prevent  the  artist  from  so  dis- 
passionate a  view  of  his  craft. 
Therefore  whatever  subject  the  prac- 

[3] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

titioner  treats,  when,  as  in  the  present  in- 
stance, he  deserts  the  palette  for  the  pen, 
it  will  be  found  to  be  strongly  tinctured 
by  the  personal  equation.  Upon  the  other 
hand  the  graphic  and  plastic  arts  are  so 
essentially  crafts,  their  every  exercise  is 
so  controlled  by  intricate  and  special 
technical  laws,  that  I  have  yet  to  find  an 
artist  young  or  old  who  would  not  prefer 
the  discussion  of  his  art  with  a  brother  of 
his  craft  to  the  most  learned  disquisition 
by  the  most  sapient  of  critics. 

Though  I  would  not  in  the  least  min- 
imise the  importance  of  the  intellectual 
equipment  of  the  artist,  his  intuitive,  tem- 
peramental quality,  that  which  we  call 
his  personality,  is  his  most  precious  pos- 
session. With  this  he  is  born,  not  made, 
and  it  so  governs  his  entire  activity  in 
production  that  it  permeates  not  only  his 
manner  of  vision  but  all  his  technical 
methods  as  well;  and  to  talk  of  art,  un- 
derstandingly,  to  the  artist  it  is  abso- 
[4] 


THE  AWAKENING   OF  VOCATION 

lutely  necessary  to  be  of  the  family,  to 
use  the  same  materials,  to  share  in  this 
nice  and  intimate  correlation  between  the 
inner  and  spiritual  grace  of  his  mental 
conception,  and  the  outward  and  visible 
sign  of  the  skill  of  his  hand.  Now,  while 
this  may  demonstrate  the  fitness  of  an 
artist  to  speak  with  his  fellows,  quite  ir- 
respective of  the  quality  or  character  of 
his  individual  work,  and  by  extension 
may  carry  to  those  who  as  laymen  are  in- 
terested in  art  some  more  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  the  artist's  point  of  view,  the 
choice  of  a  particular  theme  remains  diffi- 
cult, among  the  many  which  offer  them- 
selves to  one  who  has  always  lived  in 
touch  with  art  and  artists  here  and 
abroad;  who  has  travelled  and  passed 
many  hours  in  museums  and  galleries; 
who  has  lived  by  his  art  from  the  first, 
meeting  conditions  as  they  have  grown  in 
his  path;  and  who,  having  a  long  look 
backward,  has  unfailing  constancy,  and 

[5] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

perhaps  greater  hope,  in  the  forward 
outlook. 

With  cogitations  such  as  these  I  had 
long  considered  the  proposition  to  pre- 
pare the  Scammon  Lectures  when  the 
thought  came:  "What  would  I  at  the 
outset  of  my  career  have  most  cared  to 
hear  from  an  artist  of  experience?"  With 
this  query  my  hesitation  was  at  an  end, 
as  I  recalled  how  eagerly  I  questioned 
the  future  in  my  youth — and  how  few 
there  were  to  give  me  answer. 

Consequently  I  have  determined  to  look 
backward  on  my  own  life,  to  venture  to 
consider  myself  fairly  typical,  and  to  de- 
scribe as  comprehensively  as  I  may  be 
able  the  awakening  of  the  art  instinct, 
the  first  tentative  efforts  in  a  typical 
American  city,  the  experiences  of  a  stu- 
dent in  Europe,  and  the  growth  of  our 
art  during  the  past  thirty  years.  For 
this  I  shall  draw  largely  on  my  own  ex- 
periences and  seek  to  describe  the  condi- 

[6] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

tions  which,  presumably,  a  student  of 
to-day  will  encounter,  but  I  shall  be  able 
to  supplement  the  merely  personal  ex- 
periences with  instances  drawn  from  my 
knowledge  of  other  careers  both  at  home 
and  abroad;  and  in  the  end  I  may, 
perhaps,  add  a  useful  guidepost  at  the 
point  where  our  Western  prolongation 
continues  the  much-travelled  highway  of 
art. 

I  have  said  that  the  modern  artist  is 
the  heir  of  the  ages,  and  this  is  particu- 
larly true  of  the  American  artist.  The 
world  has  never  known  such  growth  in 
material  power  and  territorial  expansion 
as  this  country  has  seen,  since  the  day 
when  a  few  earnest  patriots  gathered  in 
Philadelphia  on  July  4,  1776,  and  in 
memorable  words  formally  resolved  to 
sever  the  ties  that  bound  them  to  the  Old 
World.  From  the  little  fringe  of  unim- 
portant towns  then  scattered  along  the 
Atlantic  coast  this  sparse  population,  in- 
[7] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

creasing,  has  spread  over  the  continent, 
until  now  from  sunrise  to  sunset  a  great 
New  World  basks  in  the  sunshine  of  free- 
dom and  prosperity.  With  this  increase 
in  material  power  there  have  grown  cer- 
tain traits  of  character  which  we  are  prone 
to  consider  essentially  American.  We  are 
resourceful  and  self-reliant,  we  begin  in 
all  things  at  the  point  where  others  have 
left  off,  we  accept  the  heritage  of  the 
ages,  and  proceed  to  adopt  for  our  own 
uses  customs  and  ideals  from  all  the 
peoples  of  the  Old  World,  and  in  an  in- 
conceivably short  time  this  heritage,  the 
outgrowth  of  centuries  of  effort,  though 
somewhat  changed  in  the  process,  is  in- 
corporated into  our  national  life.  A  single 
generation  suffices  to  make  as  homoge- 
neous and  American  as  he  whose  ances- 
tors came  over  in  the  Mayflower,  him 
whose  living  parents  still  preserve  the 
accent  and  the  language  of  the  country 
of  their  birth — in  the  aggregate  coun- 
[8] 


THE  AWAKENING   OF  VOCATION 

tries  as  various  as  the  hues  in  which  they 
are  pictured  upon  the  map  of  the 
world. 

It  was  in  this  manner  that  art  came  to 
the  New  World,  nor  did  it  linger  in  its 
advent,  for  we  find  one  of  the  sturdy  pa- 
triots who  signed  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence writing,  just  one  year  after 
that  historic  event  took  place,  on  July  4, 
1777,  to  be  precise,  to  a  native  painter 
in  terms  that  are  certainly  prophetic. 
This  interesting  letter  was  written  by 
Benjamin  Franklin  to  Charles  Wilson 
Peale,  and  its  quaint  and  shrewd  advice 
is  as  typical  of  its  writer's  worldly  wisdom 
as  its  prophecy  proves  his  far-seeing  in- 
telligence. Franklin  writes  in  these  terms: 
"If  I  were  to  advise  you  it  should  be 
by  great  industry  and  frugality  to  secure 
a  competency,  for  as  your  profession 
requires  good  eyes  and  cannot  so  well 
be  followed  with  spectacles,  and  there- 
fore will  not  probably  afford  subsistence 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

as  long  as  some  other  employments,  you 
have  a  right  to  claim  proportionally  large 
rewards  while  you  continue  to  exercise 
it  to  general  satisfaction.  The  arts  have 
always  travelled  westward,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  of  their  flourishing  hereafter  on 
our  side  of  the  Atlantic  as  the  number 
of  wealthy  inhabitants  will  increase  who 
may  be  able  and  willing  suitably  to  re- 
ward them;  since  from  several  instances 
it  appears  that  our  people  are  not  defi- 
cient in  genius." 

The  recipient  of  this  letter  was  not  "de- 
ficient in  genius,"  as  many  of  his  works 
remain  to  prove,  though  talent  and  in- 
dustry would  be  our  more  modern  way 
of  phrasing  his  particular  qualities.  In 
point  of  resourcefulness,  however,  few 
men  have  excelled  him,  for  his  biogra- 
pher tells  us  that  in  his  varied  career  he 
was  "saddle  and  harness  maker,  clock 
and  watch  maker;  painter  in  oils,  cray- 
on, miniature,  modeller  in  clay,  wax,  and 

[10] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

plaster;  he  sawed  the  ivory  for  his  min- 
iatures, moulded  the  glass  to  cover  and 
made  the  'shagreen'  cases  to  hold  them; 
was  a  soldier,  legislator,  and  lecturer,  a 
taxidermist  and  dentist";  and,  the  chron- 
icler prettily  adds,  was  "a  mild,  benevo- 
lent, and  good  man." 

I  like  to  think  of  this  forefather  of  our 
craft  as  typical  of  his  fellows  of  to-day,  for 
the  far-reaching  resourcefulness  of  our 
endeavour  is  not  only  a  most  useful  asset 
to  the  material  well-being  of  the  artist, 
but  it  lifts  him  morally  from  the  ranks  of 
those  who  depend  upon  the  favour  of  the 
rich  as  purveyors  of  luxuries,  and  plants 
him  firmly  on  his  feet  among  the  workers 
of  the  world,  who  are  busy  with  the 
beauty  of  use.  It  will  be  noted  that  even 
Franklin  saw  no  hope  for  our  future  art 
except  as  wealth  might  be  "able  and 
willing"  to  patronise  it.  It  is  possible  that 
a  few  years  later,  after  his  long  residence 
in  France,  he  may  have  conceived  an  art 
[ii] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

that  flourished  for  a  nobler  reason  than 
this;  but  from  the  first  it  is  to  the  credit 
of  our  craft  in  this  country  that  we  have 
met  the  conditions  of  life  on  an  equality 
with  other  citizens  and  have  willingly 
gone  into  the  market-place,  bending  our 
endeavour  to  every  condition  of  use,  and 
without  fear  or  favour  of  the  wealthy  have 
succeeded  or  failed  in  the  degree  that  we 
have  been  able  to  make  our  art  desirable 
to  the  country  at  large. 

England  had  been  our  mother  country 
in  every  save  a  political  sense,  and  our 
first  artists  received  their  training  there; 
but  though  the  art  of  that  country  was 
then  dependent  upon  the  patronage  of 
the  nobility  and  gentry,  our  men  no  sooner 
returned  home  than  their  efforts  tended 
to  a  larger  appeal.  With  us  every  one 
worked,  the  large  majority  with  their 
hands,  for  even  the  greatest  merchant  of 
the  time  "tended  store,"  and  no  one  was 
the  less  considered  because  he  was  in 

[12] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

trade.  Of  course  then  as  even  now  the 
chief  activity  of  the  figure  painter  was  in 
portrait  painting,  but  in  many  cases  the 
resourceful  artist  turned  his  talents  to  ac- 
count in  a  manner  to  enlist  the  interest 
of  the  general  public.  Panoramas  were 
painted  and  successfully  exhibited  by 
many  of  our  earlier  men.  Robert  Ful- 
ton, before  his  interest  in  steam  naviga- 
tion caused  his  desertion  of  painting,  was 
the  author  of  several  of  these,  as  was 
John  Vanderlyn.  Vanderlyn,  unlike  the 
majority  of  his  confreres,  had  gone  to 
France  for  his  training,  and  contempo- 
rary judgment  would  confirm  the  state- 
ment of  Aaron  Burr,  on  Vanderlyn's  re- 
turn from  his  studies,  that  he  was  among 
the  men  of  his  time  "pronounced  the  first 
painter  that  now  is  or  ever  has  been  in 
America." 

With  many  of  our  earlier  men  a  tinge 
of  patriotism  is  necessary  to  find  much  of 
interest  in  their  work,  but  in  the  case  of 

[13] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

Vanderlyn  the  fact  that  in  the  Salon  ex- 
hibition of  1805  he  was  awarded  a  med- 
al, in  the  company  of  such  works  as 
the  "Coronation  of  Napoleon,"  by  David, 
and  "Justice  Pursuing  Crime,"  by  Prud- 
hon,  is  amply  justified  by  the  merit  of  his 
work.  On  his  return  to  this  country  he 
found  that  we  had  enough  public  inter- 
est in  art  to  consider  the  embellishment 
of  our  National  Capitol,  and  indeed  John 
Trumbull  was  soon  to  be  at  work  upon 
large  canvases  for  its  rotunda,  though  it 
was  not  until  1846  that  Vanderlyn  found 
employment  there,  when  his  hand  had 
lost  its  cunning  and  this  country  by  dila- 
tory action  had  lost  the  opportunity  of  se- 
curing an  adequate  example  of  the  work 
of  our  first  well-trained  painter.  But  in 
the  interval  he  and  other  men  had  prof- 
ited by  the  hunger  for  art  of  some  de- 
scription other  than  that  of  the  portrait, 
and  a  number  of  large  works  were  pro- 
duced which,  exhibited  throughout  the 

[14] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

country,  brought  fair  returns  to  their 
authors. 

One  such  work,  "The  Court  of  Death," 
by  Rembrandt  Peale,  the  son  of  the  earlier 
painter  to  whom  Franklin's  letter  was  ad- 
dressed, brought  in  through  its  exhibition 
in  different  cities  the  sum  of  $8,880  in 
one  year.  We  may  now  see  this  work  in 
the  Detroit  Museum  of  Art,  and  feel  a  pa- 
thetic interest  in  the  desire  for  art  which 
contributed  to  this  handsome  result.  It  is 
on  record  that  the  Common  Council  of  the 
City  of  New  York  adjourned  in  a  body  to 
view  this  picture,  and  I  fear  that,  though 
we  have  progressed  in  our  art  since  that 
time,  the  day  is  far  distant  when  the  city 
fathers  of  New  York  or  Chicago  will  pay 
a  like  tribute  to  any  of  our  works. 

An  equal  recognition  of  the  public  ap- 
peal of  art  to  our  less  sophisticated  fore- 
fathers is  to  be  found  in  the  record  that 
the  first  exhibition  of  the  National  Acad- 
emy of  Design  in  1826 — a  beggarly  array 

[15] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

of  a  few  over  a  hundred  works  shown  in 
a  room  lit  by  three  gas-lights — was  "for- 
mally opened  in  the  presence  of  His  Ex- 
cellency Governor  Clinton  and  suite,  His 
Honor  the  Mayor  and  the  Common  Coun- 
cil of  the  City  of  New  York,  the  Judges 
of  the  Courts,  and  the  Faculty  of  Colum- 
bia College." 

Nor,  a  little  later,  was  there  lack  of 
more  material  recognition  of  our  home 
art.  In  1838  there  was  formed  in  New 
York  an  association  entitled  the  "Amer- 
ican Art  Union."  Its  object  was  to  en- 
courage the  arts  by  the  purchase  of  pict- 
ures and  their  distribution  by  lottery 
among  its  members,  each  of  whom  paid 
into  its  treasury  five  dollars  per  an- 
num. For  this  sum  they  received  a 
publication  devoted  to  the  fine  arts,  a 
premium  of  a  steel  engraving  which  the 
union  caused  to  be  made  from  some  one 
of  the  pictures  purchased,  and  a  chance 
in  the  lottery  by  which  all  these  paintings 

[16] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

were  distributed  among  the  members.  It 
was  undoubtedly  illegal,  but  many  among 
our  prominent  citizens  served  as  its  di- 
rectors, and  benevolent  justice  avoided 
noticing  its  infraction  of  our  laws  for  a 
dozen  years.  A  permanent  exhibition  gal- 
lery was  established  on  Broadway,  .and 
the  success  of  the  ingenious  scheme  was 
so  great  that  in  1849  the  Art  Union  en- 
rolled 18,690  members  and  expended  in 
the  purchase  of  paintings  $83,000.  Other 
times,  other  manners,  and  this  interesting 
evidence  of  public  interest  in  art  probably 
deserved  the  death  it  met  when  an  of- 
fended newspaper  found  it  to  its  profit  to 
invoke  existing  laws  and  so  destroy  it. 
But  it  would  be  interesting  to  compare 
the  sum  quoted  above  with  the  aggregate 
returns  from  sales  in  all  the  various 
exhibitions  held  throughout  our  country 
to-day. 

Personally  I  have  a  tender  memory  for 
the  activities  of  the  American  Art  Union, 

[17] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

though  it  was  twenty-five  years  after  it 
ceased  to  exist  that  I  remember  in  my 
parents'  house  some  of  the  engravings  is- 
sued to  its  yearly  subscribers,  and  certain 
of  the  paintings  distributed  by  the  hand 
of  fortune  which  had  found  permanent 
homes  in  Albany.  They  were  the  first 
pictures  that  I  knew,  and,  in  the  dearth 
of  all  other  expressions  of  art,  they  were 
studied  with  an  attention  that  later  on 
the  treasures  of  the  Louvre  or  the  Uffizi 
could  scarce  elicit. 

The  youth  awakening  to  a  sense  of  art 
to-day,  in  no  matter  how  remote  a  lo- 
cality in  our  broad  land,  can  scarcely 
form  an  idea  of  the  change  that  has 
come  within  forty  years  in  the  diffusion 
of  adequate  representations  of  works  of 
art.  The  photograph,  and  its  mechanical 
reproduction,  have  put  within  the  reach 
of  the  student  virtually  all  that  has  been 
done  in  art,  and,  lacking  the  colour,  the 
museums  of  Europe,  the  current  produc- 
ts 1 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

tions  exhibited  in  all  the  cities  of  the 
world,  are  within  the  reach  of  all  stu- 
dents. I  can  remember  in  the  early 
seventies,  when  I  was  already  engaged 
in  drawing  for  illustration  in  New  York, 
how  a  single  photograph  from  a  Salon 
picture  would  be  passed  from  hand  to 
hand  among  the  younger  artists,  and  pro- 
voke more  discussion  than  would  the 
entire  illustrated  catalogue  of  the  same 
exhibition  to-day.  Later,  in  Paris,  pho- 
tography had  by  no  means  culled  all  the 
flowers  from  the  rich  gardens  of  art  exist- 
ing in  the  museums  of  Europe.  The  re- 
productions by  half-tone  were  unknown, 
and  engravings  in  outline  or  slightly  in- 
dicated shadow,  giving  no  hint  of  the 
complete  effect  of  a  picture,  were  thought 
to  suffice  for  the  purposes  of  the  student. 
How  eagerly  the  first  photographs  from 
the  Prado  were  welcomed!  And  though 
their  price  was  beyond  the  means  of  the 
student,  yet,  by  some  heroic  measure  like 

[19] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

going  without  your  dinner,  you  might 
become  the  happy  possessor  of  a  photo- 
graph from  Velasquez. 

During  the  Civil  War  and  the  few  years 
after  that  witnessed  my  first  halting  ef- 
forts, Velasquez  was  virtually  an  unknown 
name  to  us  here.  Yet  I  was  the  child 
of  gentle  and  cultured  parents,  and  the 
names  of  the  great  artists  were  not  alto- 
gether unfamiliar  in  the  circle  where  I 
was  reared.  Michelangelo,  Raphael,  and 
Rubens  and  the  earlier  American  ar- 
tists Gilbert  Stuart,  Benjamin  West,  and 
Washington  Allston  were  spoken  of — all 
names  of  visionary  beings  who  had  dwelt 
in  some  enchanted  land,  more  kindly  than 
any  I  could  ever  hope  to  penetrate ;  where, 
after  long  years  of  patient  study,  their 
genius  had  blossomed  and  borne  the 
fruit  of  perfect  works  of  art.  Some  of 
the  works  of  West  and  Allston  my 
mother  had  seen;  probably  in  their  ex- 
hibition through  the  country  these  had 

[20] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

come  to  Albany,  and  /her  description  of 
West's  "Death  on  the  Pale  Horse" 
thrilled  me  in  a  way  that  was  scarce  re- 
peated when  many  years  after  I  saw  the 
picture  myself. 

One  tale  of  West,  apocryphal  perhaps, 
but  pertinent  to  what  I  have  already  said 
of  the  self-respecting  attitude  of  the 
American  artist,  comes  back  to  me  as  I 
may  have  heard  it  from  my  mother's  lips. 
The  little  Benjamin,  possessing  scant 
share  of  Quaker  humility,  was  met  walk- 
ing one  day  by  another  youth  who, 
mounted  on  a  horse,  offered  him  a  seat 
behind  him.  "I'll  not  ride  behind  any 
one,"  asserted  Benjamin,  whereupon  his 
friend  gave  him  the  more  honourable  seat. 
As  they  jogged  along  the  talk  turned  on 
their  future  occupations.  "I  shall  be  an 
artist,"  declared  the  Quaker  youth.  "An 
artist?  What's  that?"  "An  artist  is  the 
companion  of  kings  and  emperors,"  spoke 
Ambition.  "But  we  have  no  kings  and 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

emperors  over  here,"  objected  the  more 
prosaic  youth,  to  which  West  replied  pro- 
phetically, "Then  I  will  go  and  find 
them,"  and  then  pursued,  "What  will  you 
be?"  "A  tailor,"  replied  his  friend.  "Let 
me  down,"  shouted  the  future  protege  of 
George  the  Third.  "I'll  not  ride  with  a 
tailor." 

Alas,  humiliating  as  is  the  confession,  I 
had  no  such  high  ambition.  I  had,  indeed, 
in  my  sixth  or  seventh  year  essayed  the 
higher,  forms  of  composition.  War  was 
rife  upon  the  land,  and  I  suppose  in  com- 
mon with  thousands  of  my  young  com- 
patriots, I  had  depicted  many  gory  com- 
bats; at  first  upon  my  slate  and  then  in 
more  studied  works  in  water-colour,  where 
the  stars  and  stripes,  the  blue  of  the 
uniforms,  and  a  plentiful  use  of  vermil- 
ion for  the  accidents  of  war,  exhausted 
the  resources  of  my  Winsor  &  Newton 
colour  box.  I  even  remember  the  awak- 
ening of  a  keen  artistic  rivalry,  when  my 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

mother  pronounced  one  of  these  works 
to  be  inferior  to  a  similar  battle-piece 
executed  by  one  of  my  cousins,  and  the 
resulting  determination  to  do  better  than 
he,  which  effort  was  soon  rewarded  with 
the  preference  of  the  same  sagacious, 
though  possibly  prejudiced,  critic. 

But  such  efforts  were  only  those  which 
any  child  with  no  pronounced  vocation 
may  attempt,  though  as  they  form  my 
earliest  recollections  they  seemed  as  seri- 
ous to  me  then  as  later  work  which,  as  a 
child  of  larger  growth,  I  have  attempted. 

What  is  quite  certain  is  that  as  my  in- 
telligence developed  the  sense  of  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  life  task  that  I  had  set  myself 
grew  in  proportion.  With  the  diffusion  of 
art  and  knowledge  of  its  processes  that 
is  general  to-day  here,  I  doubt  if  a  fairly 
intelligent  child  could  be  as  ignorant  of 
the  steps  leading  to  the  production  of  the 
average  picture  as  I  was.  We  now  see 
that  the  average  artist  is  quite  an  ordinary 

[23] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

person,  but  to  me  at  the  age  of  ten  or 
twelve  any  one  who  could  paint  a  picture 
wore  a  nimbus  and  quite  transcended  or- 
dinary mortality.  As  I  shall  show  by  ex- 
ample later  on,  such  ignorance  would  not 
have  been  possible  to  a  little  peasant  boy 
in  France,  but  the  wide  dissemination  of 
literature  in  our  country,  which  results 
in  a  species  of  culture  much  more  general 
than  exists  in  Europe,  still  leaves  great 
lapses  with  us  in  the  matter  of  art. 

In  the  days  of  which  I  speak  those  about 
me,  to  whom  the  names  of  the  great  ar- 
tists of  the  past  were  familiar  enough, 
had  no  such  knowledge  of  their  aim,  of 
the  manner  of  their  education,  or  even 
their  relation  to  the  environment  in  which 
they  lived,  as  they  had  of  the  great 
writers  whose  works  were  within  their 
reach. 

Had  I  cherished  any  such  ambition,  for 
instance,  I  should  have  known  by  pre- 
cept and  instruction  just  how  to  go  about 

[24] 


THE  AWAKENING   OF  VOCATION 

it  to  become  a  Shakespeare;  but  to  tread 
in  the  path  of  Michelangelo  there  was  a 
vast  uncharted  country  to  cross  even  to 
approach  the  nebulous  land  where  he 
dwelt;  and  there  was  no  one  to  guide 
me.  This  I  fancy  even  now  might  not 
be  an  uncommon  plight  for  a  child  in 
unartistic  surroundings,  but  the  means 
of  a  better  knowledge  are  certainly  more 
easy  to  procure. 

But  to  dabble  in  colour  by  any  means 
was  a  delight  in  itself,  and  I  therefore 
centred  my  youthful  ambition  upon  the 
trade  of  the  sign  painter.  And  here  I  be- 
lieve that  I  developed  a  sense  which  is 
somewhat  unusual.  As  I  took  my  walks 
abroad  I  studied  the  work  of  the  various 
sign  painters  with  such  attention  that  I 
soon  became  so  conversant  with  the  va- 
rying styles  of  the  artists  then  practis- 
ing that  hitherto  unclassified  branch  in 
Albany,  that  I  did  not  need  to  consult  the 
modest  signature  upon  their  productions 

[25] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

to  determine  the  designer  of  a  given 
work.  Within  a  few  years  I  could  still 
discover  in  places  in  my  native  city 
weather-beaten  signs,  surviving  since  these 
childish  days,  and  ascribe  to  them  the 
forgotten  names  of  the  painters.  There 
was  living  there  at  that  time  also  one 
who  was  probably  quite  an  ordinary 
decorator,  a  German  who  practised  so- 
called  fresco-painting.  He  was  the  artist 
of  a  row  of  simulated  statues,  standing 
in  painted  niches  around  the  walls  of  a 
hall  where  concerts  and  other  entertain- 
ments were  given.  On  the  rare  occasions 
that  I  was  taken  there,  the  artifice  of 
shadows  by  which  these  figures  appeared 
to  stand  out  from  the  recessed  niches, 
which  seemed  to  recede,  realised  for  me 
the  last  word  of  artistic  proficiency.  When 
this  simple  old  workman  was  pointed 
out  in  the  street  I  fairly  reverenced  him, 
and  felt  that  my  native  city  was  honoured 
by  his  presence.  I  do  not  think  that  I  ex- 

[26] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

aggerate,  in  thus  insisting  on  these  very 
youthful  memories,  for  they  remain  very 
vivid  to  my  recollection  and  seem  to  em- 
body the  struggle  toward  a  light  that, 
veiled  and  flickering  though  it  may  be, 
shines  alluringly  at  the  end  of  the  path- 
way of  adolescence;  which  many  a  child 
follows  gropingly  and  blindly,  but  with 
set  purpose. 

To-day,  almost  intuitively,  the  youthful 
aspirant  would  know  enough  to  go  to 
nature  and  try  his  'prentice  hand  in  draw- 
ing simple  objects,  or  failing  such  intui- 
tion even  our  public  schools  put  the  pos- 
sible future  artist  upon  this  logical  path; 
but  the  youth  that  I  have  best  known  had 
no  such  luck.  A  little  later  I  put  all  my 
immediate  relations  under  tribute  by  mak- 
ing rapid  sketches  from  them,  but  for  the 
most  part  my  early  efforts  were  purely 
imaginative.  I  naturally  opened  my  eyes 
to  the  world  about  me  and  in  a  fugitive 
manner  tried  to  store  my  memory  with 

[27] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  aspect  of  natural  objects,  and  to  learn 
by  this  cursory  method  the  structure  and 
movement  of  the  human  figure.  It  was 
to  be  a  number  of  years  before  I  sat  my- 
self down  to  draw  before  a  plaster  cast 
from  a  statue;  which  remaining  immov- 
able and  fixed  affords  the  logical  method 
of  acquiring  knowledge  of  the  figure. 

Let  me  say  parenthetically,  however,  that 
this  early  reliance  upon  observation,  be- 
coming a  fixed  habit,  I  have  found  to  be 
of  use  throughout  life.  I  have  observed 
later,  when  engaged  in  teaching,  that  a 
large  majority  of  students  depend  almost 
entirely  upon  their  ability  to  copy  what 
is  put  before  them,  without  cultivating 
the  memory  of  what  they  draw.  Fre- 
quently in  a  life  class  the  student  is  un- 
able to  reconstruct  from  memory  a  figure 
in  the  identical  posture  of  the  model  from 
whom  his  study  was  drawn.  There  has 
grown,  moreover,  owing  to  this  slavish 
reliance  upon  the  copy  from  nature,  a 

[28] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

prejudice  among  a  great  number  of  ar- 
tists against  working  from  memory  or,  as 
the  vernacular  of  the  studio  puts  it,  from 
"chic."  If  we  reflect  that  from  the  time 
that  the  eye  observes  the  object  in  nat- 
ure, and  then  in  turn  follows  the  hand 
that  puts  down  the  result  of  such  obser- 
vation, an  appreciable  moment  passes,  in 
which  the  mind  retains  the  image  that  the 
eye  has  seen,  we  must  realise  that  this  in 
itself  constitutes  an  exercise  in  memory, 
however  brief.  Consequently,  as  despite 
a  subservient  effort  we  cannot  be  as  au- 
tomatic as  the  photographic  camera,  we 
might  greatly  enlarge  our  capacity  both 
to  see  and  to  express  if  we  cultivated  our 
memory  to  retain,  not  only  the  essential 
and  unchanging  laws  which  govern  the 
construction  of  the  human  figure,  but  all 
the  momentary  actions  to  which  it  is 
subjected;  for  the  posed  model  is  always 
action  arrested,  and  the  result  of  a  slavish 
copy  is  always  lifeless. 

[29] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

But  further  consideration  of  this  sub- 
ject may  be  postponed  as  I  return  to  my 
earlier  years.  As  time  went  on,  with  a 
constant  preoccupation  of  my  future  work 
which  quite  separated  me  from  the  or- 
dinary sports  of  childhood,  my  efforts 
grew  more  ambitious  and  the  career  of 
the  sign  painter  seemed  less  attractive. 
Chance  threw  me  into  the  company  of 
a  well-trained  English  painter,  who  was 
employed  in  the  railway  shops  in  a  suburb 
of  Albany  in  the  interior  decoration  of  the 
wagons  of  the  company.  In  those  days 
what  were  technically  known  as  "head- 
linings"  covered  the  ceilings  of  the  rail- 
way wagons,  and  consisted  of  elaborate 
painted  ornament  often  surrounding  a 
panel  of  flowers  or  landscape,  which  was 
painted  on  canvas  and  then  fixed  in 
place.  Painted  panels  often  ornamented 
the  spaces  between  the  windows  and  the 
ceiling  of  the  wagon  as  well. 

My    Saturdays,    when     released     from 

[30] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

school,  were  generally  passed  at  the  rail- 
way works,  and  I  never  tired  of  watch- 
ing the  deft  painter,  as  with  facile  brush, 
without  model  of  any  kind,  he  caused 
these  squares  of  canvas  to  blossom  with 
roses  and  dahlias,  with  morning-glories  or 
peonies,  or  painted  distant  blue  moun- 
tains reflected  in  tranquil  lakes,  and  then 
dotted  in  white  sails,  with  easy  mastery. 
Equally  interesting  were  the  ornamental 
portions  of  the  decoration ;  first  drawn  on 
large  sheets  of  manila  paper,  then  pierced 
along  their  outlines  with  a  series  of  minute 
perforations  which,  when  this  pattern  was 
placed  upon  the  canvas,  permitted  the 
design  to  be  transferred  by  "pouncing" 
or  sifting  charcoal  dust  through  the  per- 
forations in  the  pattern.  This  done,  por- 
tions were  gilded,  or  painted  and  modelled 
with  the  same  flowing  brush.  As  my  recol- 
lection serves  me  this  genial  craftsman 
was  indeed  expert,  within  certain  limita- 
tions; in  any  case  my  gratitude  is  due  his 

[31] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

memory  for  the  patience  with  which  he 
bore  my  presence  and  my  endless  ques- 
tions. He  likewise  afforded  an  outlet  for 
my  growing  ambition,  for  here  was  one 
clearly  nearer  the  vague  paradise  of  art, 
that  like  a  mirage  filled  the  horizon,  than 
any  sign  painter.  More  seriously  speaking, 
I  question  if  it  is  not  from  my  long  watch- 
ing at  his  side  that  the  early  interest  in 
interior  decoration,  which  has  dominated 
my  effort,  first  found  birth.  It  is  certain 
that  many  of  his  methods,  in  common 
with  all  decorative  painters,  I  use  to-day. 
My  school-days,  always  more  or  less  in- 
termittent, seem  to  have  finished  shortly 
before  I  was  fifteen,  and  about  that  time 
I  encountered  an  artist  of  another  calibre 
who  was  to  have  a  most  important  in- 
fluence on  my  work  and  life. 

If  you  can  imagine  some  little  tranquil 
town  in  Italy  sheltering,  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  some  artist  of  first  rank,  some 
master  who  from  choice  preferred  the 

[32] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

comparative  isolation  imposed  by  ab- 
sence from  the  centre  of  the  art  of  his 
time,  and  can  then  imagine  a  small  boy, 
ignorant  yet  inquisitive,  to  whom  the 
three  magic  letters  ART  comprised  all 
that  he  dreamed  or  wished  to  know,  who 
lived  in  the  same  city;  you  can  easily 
picture  this  minor  incident  of  life  in  our 
historic  old  Dutch  town  of  Albany. 

This  isolated  artist  was  E.  D.  Palmer, 
a  sculptor,  who,  dying  in  1904  at  the 
ripe  age  of  eighty-seven,  had  survived  the 
years  of  his  artistic  activity  by  so  long  a 
period  that  his  service  to  our  art  is  im- 
perfectly understood  as  yet;  though  Mr. 
Lorado  Taft,  in  his  "History  of  American 
Sculpture,"  has  endeavoured  to  make  his 
position  clear  in  the  story  of  our  earlier 
art. 

But  at  the  time  of  which  I  write  his 
residence  away  from  New  York  had  little 
dimmed  his  success,  and  in  the  city  of 
Albany,  though  there  was  not  the  slight- 

[33] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

est  adequate  comprehension  of  his  talent, 
he  was  something  more  than  a  local  celeb- 
rity. "There  goes  Palmer,  the  sculptor," 
would  be  whispered  as  he  passed  in  the 
street,  and  in  truth  his  handsome  presence 
was  one  to  be  noticed  in  any  environ- 
ment. At  least  six  feet  in  height,  erect  as 
he  remained  to  the  day  of  his  death,  with 
a  great  mass  of  beard,  iron-gray,  a  dis- 
tinguished profile,  and  an  eye  both  keen 
and  kindly,  he  would  have  been  any- 
where a  marked  man.  More  than  once  I 
had  lingered  in  the  side  street,  where  he 
had  erected  spacious  studios,  and  in  the 
summer  days  when  the  doors  might  be 
open  I  had  seen  in  the  lower  studio  work- 
men carving  blocks  of  marble  into  sem- 
blances of  human  shape.  My  timidity 
had  never  suffered  me  to  approach  and 
follow  their  work  more  closely,  and  if  I 
was  ignorant  of  the  processes  of  paint- 
ing, I  was  in  utter  darkness  as  to  those 
of  sculpture. 

[34] 


E.  D.  Palmer,  from  a  photograph,  1868 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

Had  I  then  known  the  story  of  Cimabue 
and  the  young  Giotto;  had  I  then  read  the 
anecdote  of  Gilbert  Stuart,  who,  when  a 
neophyte  bringing  a  picture  for  his  judg- 
ment hesitated  at  the  threshold,  called 
out  heartily:  "Bring  it  in;  we  don't  keep 
painting  out-of-doors  here";  if,  in  a  word, 
I  had  known  the  nobility  which  obliges 
an  elder  artist  to  welcome  a  younger 
aspirant,  I  might  have  sought  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  master  of  these  hand- 
some studios;  within  which  I  knew  were 
performed  those  mysteries  of  art  which, 
from  the  time  I  could  think,  had  baffled 
my  crude  understanding. 

But  my  admission  to  the  temple  came 
about  in  the  most  commonplace  way 
through  the  fortuitous  encounter  in  my 
school  with  the  young  son  of  the  sculp- 
tor, to-day  the  well-known  landscape 
painter,  Walter  L.  Palmer.  The  father 
welcomed  the  son's  new  friend,  and  within 
a  very  few  months  I  was  as  familiar  with 

[35] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  interior  of  those  studios  as  with  my 
own  home,  and  the  boyish  efforts  of  my 
new  friend  were  not  less  guided,  blamed, 
or  praised  by  the  sculptor  than  were  my 
own.  Such  guidance  as  we  received,  how- 
ever, my  friend  and  I,  followed  no  sys- 
tem like  that  which  a  modern  art  school 
would  afford.  We  were  left  very  much  to 
our  own  direction.  In  a  studio  filled  with 
casts  of  the  sculptor's  own  works  and  from 
the  antique,  it  never  occurred  to  us,  nor 
was  it  suggested,  that  by  studying  these 
we  could  form  a  basis  for  a  knowledge  of 
the  structure  of  the  human  figure.  This 
was  undoubtedly  for  the  reason  that  the 
elder  Palmer  was  entirely  self-taught. 

In  early  manhood  he  was  a  carpenter  in 
a  remote  inland  town  of  western  New 
York,  when  some  rare  travellers  return- 
ing from  Europe  showed  him  a  shell 
cameo.  This  kindled  his  ambition,  and, 
procuring  materials  for  the  work,  and  with 
tools  fashioned  by  himself,  he  set  himself 

[36] 


THE  AWAKENING   OF  VOCATION 

the  task  of  producing  a  cameo  portrait. 
His  undeveloped  capacity  was  little  short 
of  genius,  and  by  repeated  effort  he  soon 
became  something  more  than  skilful,  for 
there  remain  a  long  series  of  these  minia- 
ture works,  in  which  close  veracity  of 
portraiture  is  allied  to  a  genuine  sense  of 
beauty.  The  minute  scale  on  which  he 
was  obliged  to  work  soon  engendered 
trouble  with  his  eyesight,  and  the  transi- 
tion to  larger  sculpture  was  thus  imposed. 
Beginning  with  modest  busts  of  a  portrait 
character  he  was  led  on  by  his  evident  vo- 
cation to  works  of  greater  scope. 

These  were  the  days  when  such  little 
sculpture  as  had  been  attempted  by  our 
compatriot  artists  consisted  of  weak  im- 
itations of  the  Dane  Thorwaldsen,  and 
Gibson,  the  English  sculptor,  who,  estab- 
lished in  Rome,  limited  their  production 
to  uninspired  imitations  of  classic  sculpt- 
ure. Hiram  Powers's  "Greek  Slave," 
upon  its  exhibition  in  New  York,  had  ex- 

[37] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

cited  an  interest  difficult  to  understand 
to-day,  except  as  we  realise  the  absolute 
dearth  of  any  standard  of  sculpture  exist- 
ing in  our  then  provincial  country — nor 
in  Europe,  for  that  matter,  save  in  France, 
where  Rude  and  his  followers  were  doing 
noble  work.  It  is  probable  that  had  Pal- 
mer been  subjected  to  the  influences  that 
Greenough,  Crawford,  and  Powers  had 
found  in  Europe,  his  work  like  theirs 
would  have  suffered  the  prevailing  clas- 
sical imitation,  without  acquiring  more 
technical  proficiency  than  theirs — for  in 
this  latter  quality  he  was  the  equal  of  any 
American  sculptor  of  his  time. 

But  as  it  was  he  elected  to  remain  at 
home,  and  our  patriotic  pride,  instituting 
comparisons  between  the  home-keeping 
sculptor  and  those  who  practised  their 
art  abroad,  awarded  him  abundance  of 
fame  and  opportunity.  I  remember  later 
when  I  was  a  student  in  Paris,  and  when 
my  early  mentor  came  to  Europe  for  the 

[38] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

first  time,  his  expressed  regret  that  early 
in  life  he  had  not  known  of  the  high 
quality  of  French  sculpture  and  the  op- 
portunities for  study  there,  but  in  the 
days  of  which  I  speak  he  was  opposed 
to  any  form  of  definite  training.  "Study 
nature,  and  above  all  keep  a  tight  grasp 
on  your  originality,"  would  sum  up  the 
advice  he  gave.  Now  originality,  or  the 
personality  of  the  artist,  is  undoubtedly 
the  fine  flower  of  his  equipment;  but  the 
species  of  originality  that  will  not  stand 
training  he  is  quite  likely  to  find  an  en- 
cumbering weed  in  his  future  culture. 
There  is,  moreover,  a  moment  in  a  child's 
artistic  development  when  his  fancy  is 
latent,  and  he  is  quite  content  to  copy 
to  the  best  of  his  ability  whatever  may 
be  set  before  him.  It  is  in  these  years 
that  an  accurate  eye,  and  a  habit  of  es- 
tablishing firmly  the  foundations  of  a 
work  to  be  undertaken,  can  best  be  ac- 
quired; for  then  the  means  seem  alone 

[39] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

important  as  the  aim  is  imperfectly  under- 
stood. 

If  these  post-facto  reflections  can  be 
justified,  without  yielding  aught  of  the 
gratitude  I  shall  ever  feel  for  this  early 
influence,  in  other  ways  I  esteem  this 
experience  as  most  fortunate.  Perhaps 
had  my  bent  been  for  sculpture  it  would 
have  been  even  more  so,  for  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  studio  was  not  unlike  that 
of  the  workshops  of  earlier  artists  before 
the  institution  of  art  schools,  with  their 
definite  system,  calculated,  as  all  such 
systems  must  be,  rather  for  the  average 
than  the  individual  student.  There  was  as 
I  remember  a  constant  discussion  of  the 
principles  of  art,  much  of  which  was  be- 
yond my  comprehension;  but,  as  it  was 
all  the  result  of  the  reflections  of  one  who 
had  evolved  his  theories  from  isolated  and 
individual  practice,  in  a  country  where 
accepted  conventions  did  not  prevail,  they 
were  racy  of  the  soil;  and  prepared  my 

[40] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

mind  for  the  conditions  I  found  existing 
not  many  years  after  in  New  York.  In 
company  with  the  sculptor's  son  our 
practice  was  constant,  and  soon  we  were 
absorbed  in  work  from  nature.  My  grow- 
ing ambition  had  taken  an  upward  step 
and  was  now  centred  on  illustration,  for 
I  still  did  not  dare  hope  that  I  could  ever 
become  a  full-fledged  painter.  It  must 
have  been  about  this  time  therefore  that 
I  wrote  to  an  artist,  whose  work  had 
charmed  me  in  one  of  the  children's 
magazines.  My  special  query,  as  nearly 
as  I  remember,  was  as  to  the  process  by 
which  one  produced  an  effect  of  moon- 
light. In  reply  this  'artist  informed  me, 
somewhat  to  my  surprise,  that  he  had  no 
special  recipe  for  this  species  of  work; 
but  if  I  would  go  out  on  a  moonlight 
night  and  carefully  observe  the  manner 
in  which  the  light  and  shadow  fell,  the 
amount  of  detail  of  form  that  was  ob- 
scured or  visible,  and  the  general  effect 

[41] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

of  the  whole,  and  then  endeavour  to  draw 
it  from  memory,  returning  again  and 
again  to  verify  my  impression,  I  might 
in  the  end  obtain  my  desire.  Perhaps  it 
was  such  advice  that  first  sent  me  out-of- 
doors  and,  for  other  effects  that  could  be 
studied  by  daylight,  confirmed  the  habit. 

Few  painters  I  am  certain  have  experi- 
enced more  joy  from  working  in  the  open 
air  than  I,  and  the  habit  was  thus  early 
formed.  The  placid  landscape  upon  the 
Hudson,  and  in  the  country  surrounding 
Albany,  soon  saw  two  youthful  devotees 
assiduous  at  their  task,  who  in  boat  or 
on  foot  left  few  corners  unexplored;  and 
few  of  its  aspects,  essayed  in  sketch  or 
study,  were  left  to  blush  unseen. 

Meanwhile  I  had  attained  the  mature  age 
of  fifteen.  I  must  in  some  ways  have  been 
a  most  obnoxious  youngster,  for  I  was 
overcome  with  a  sense  of  what  I  suppose  I 
may  call  the  primal  curse  of  Eden,  the  law 
condemning  us  to  labour  for  our  bread.  I 

[42] 


; Peace  in  Bondage,"  bas-relief,  by  E.  D.  Palmer,  1863 

Now  in  possession  of  Albany  Art  and  Historical  Society 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

remember  quite  shocking  a  friend  much 
older  than  myself,  Mr.  William  T.  Adams, 
who,  under  the  pen-name  of  "Oliver 
Optic,"  had  endeared  himself  to  all  my 
generation,  by  writing  a  series  of  children's 
books,  which  remain  in  my  memory  as 
the  most  enchanting  works  ever  given 
a  boy  to  read.  He  was  the  editor  at  the 
time  of  a  children's  magazine  in  Boston, 
and  to  him  I  wrote,  gravely  announcing 
that  the  time  was  at  hand  when  in  com- 
mon decency  I  should  begin  to  earn  my 
living,  and  proffered  some  of  my  crude 
work  for  publication  in  the  magazine. 
As  he  was  acquainted  with  the  circum- 
stances of  my  parents,  who,  though  not 
wealthy,  were  not  only  able  but  most 
willing  to  support  me  until  I  Was  of  an 
age  to  work,  he  readily  understood  that 
I  was  merely  morbid,  and  kindly,  but 
most  firmly,  told  me  to  bide  my  time. 

It  is  true  that  at  home  my  parents  held 
out  little  hope  to  me  that  I  could  realise 

[43] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

my  desire  to  become  an  artist.  This  was 
most  gently  denied  me,  partly  for  the 
reason  that  the  career  is  one  that  has 
never  appealed  to  parents  in  our  country, 
where  is  still  lacking  the  appreciation  of 
art  that  makes  an  Old- World  father  weigh 
carefully  the  honours  that  may  come  to  a 
successful  artist  in  the  balance  with  the 
very  evident  insecurities  of  the  career; 
and,  more  often  than  not,  find  the  former 
more  alluring  than  the  dangers  of  failure. 
But  more  potent  than  this  was  their  belief 
which  I  shared  to  some  extent,  despite  all 
the  promptings  of  desire,  that  the  career 
was  one  that  demanded  years  of  prepa- 
ration, of  study  devoid  of  any  remunera- 
tion of  a  material  sort,  long  residence  in 
Europe,  and,  in  the  end,  a  more  than 
doubtful  career  in  a  country  which  they 
held  was  still  in  process  of  formation, 
and  only  capable  of  according  the  artist 
scant  honour  and  a  precarious  material 
existence. 

[44] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

I  will  not  linger  over  what  there  may  be 
of  truth  even  now  in  this  last  contention, 
but  as  events  soon  proved  this  magic 
garden  of  Art  may  be  entered  at  humbler 
gates  than  by  the  main  entrance;  and, 
once  within,  there  is  quite  enough  to 
keep  one  charmed — yes,  and  busy.  It 
might  be  better,  certainly,  were  all  young 
aspirants  so  fortunately  situated  as  to 
avoid  in  their  earlier  efforts  those  employ- 
ments of  art  where  the  standard  is  set  so 
low  that  their  taste  may  be  vitiated  or  their 
end  too  easily  attained;  but  art  in  its 
first  flowering  in  Italy  accepted  the  law 
of  usefulness,  and  to-day  we  are  proud 
to  treasure  in  our  museums  the  objects 
of  household  utility  of  that  time ;  adorned 
perhaps  by  the  painting  of  Botticelli  or 
given  form  by  the  sculpture  of  Cellini. 

For  the  next  two  years  I  remember 
living  in  what  it  is  not  quite  fair  to  call 
an  armed  neutrality  with  my  parents.  In 
truth  they  were  arrayed  against  the  ful- 

[45] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

filment  of  what  I  knew  in  my  secret 
heart  was  to  be,  but  for  the  most  part 
they  left  me  free  to  my  constant  occupa- 
tion, and  probably  did  what  many  wise 
parents  do  in  the  presence  of  an  absorb- 
ing vocation,  and  simply  temporised.  I  of 
course  knew  that  if  my  dream  was  to  be 
fulfilled  it  must  be  by  my  unaided  effort, 
and  I  made  many  trials  to  prove  that  my 
embryonic  art  could  be  self-supporting. 
New  York  was  but  a  few  hours  distant 
from  my  city.  Going  thither  armed  with  a 
portfolio  filled  with  what  I  was  pleased  to 
consider  drawings,  I  made  the  rounds, 
not  only  of  all  the  illustrated  publications 
of  the  time,  but  every  wood-engraver, 
most  of  whose  work  was  then  of  the  most 
mechanical  description,  was  honoured  by 
my  visits  and  the  proffer  of  my  services. 
As  I  was  in  spite  of  all  my  tenacity  of  pur- 
pose an  extremely  timid  youth,  these  vis- 
its, or  rather  the  reception  I  met,  almost 
uniformly  tried  my  soul  to  the  utmost. 

[46] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

At  home  in  my  native  city  I  scored 
some  small,  very  small,  successes.  For 
my  friend,  who  painted  "head-linings" 
for  the  railway  wagons,  I  drew  a  fero- 
cious Knight  Templar  on  horseback  for 
some  society  banner  which  he  had  been 
commissioned  to  do ;  which  elicited  a  trib- 
ute from  one  of  my  elder  brothers  to  tlie 
effect  that  as  I  had  earned  five  dollars  by 
one  day's  work  it  was  a  pity  that  I  could 
not  do  it  more  often.  I  also  profited,  pre- 
sumably by  the  illicit  millions  William 
M.  Tweed  and  his  following  abstracted 
from  the  treasury  of  the  city  of  New 
York,  to  the  amount  of  fifteen  dollars  by 
the  sale  of  a  water-colour  that  I  had  vent- 
ured to  show  in  the  window  of  the  local 
art  store,  where  it  attracted  the  attention 
of  and  was  purchased  by  the  Hon.  Mike 
Norton,  one  of  Tweed's  lieutenants. 

But  it  was  not  until  a  few  months  be- 
fore I  was  seventeen  that  anything  really 
decisive  occurred.  Among  the  wood-en- 

[47] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

gravers  in  New  York  at  whose  doors  I 
had  knocked  was  one  who  had  not  re- 
pulsed me.  This  exceptional  person,  Mr. 
John  Filmer  by  name,  was  then  engaged 
in  engraving  a  series  of  large  designs 
from  drawings  by  different  artists  for 
the  New  York  Independent,  which  at  that 
time  was  issued  as  a  sheet  corresponding 
in  size  to  a  daily  newspaper,  and  once  a 
month  contained  a  front-page  illustra- 
tion. On  one  of  my  visits  to  him,  Mr. 
Filmer  had  good-naturedly  said  that,  if 
I  would  prepare  an  attractive  design,  he 
would  go  with  me  to  submit  it  to  the 
editor  of  the  Independent.  So  I  returned 
to  Albany  and  bent  all  my  energies  to  a 
drawing  representing  a  number  of  boys 
coasting  by  moonlight,  material  for  which 
was  abundant  in  our  hilly  city  that 
enjoys  nearly  six  months  of  winter.  Ah, 
me!  How  many  nights  I  have  half  frozen 
my  toes  studying  my  effect  of  moonlight. 
For  the  figures  I  pressed  some  of  my 

[48] 


I? 
1 


•§> 

I 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

young  comrades  into  service,  and  made 
innumerable  sketches  of  myself,  in  ap- 
propriate positions,  reflected  in  a  large 
mirror  in  my  room  at  home,  which  had 
often  served  this  purpose. 

At  last  the  drawing,  finished  as  well  as 
I  could  do  it,  was  carried  to  New  York 
and,  in  company  with  my  sympathetic 
engraver,  an  eventful  interview  was  had 
with  the  editor  of  the  Independent.  With 
more  or  less  doubt,  inspired  by  my  ex- 
tremely youthful  aspect,  it  was  agreed  that 
if  I  could  reproduce  my  original  drawing 
on  boxwood  ready  for  the  engraver's 
burin  it  would  be  accepted.  In  those 
days  all  drawings  for  illustration  were 
drawn  on  the  prepared  surface  of  box- 
wood, a  surface  that,  even  in  after  years 
and  with  much  practice,  I  always  found 
rebellious.  To  make,  therefore,  for  the 
first  time  a  drawing  that  was  destined  to 
be  the  largest  illustration  that  I  ever  un- 
dertook, which  demanded  no  little  tech- 

[49] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

nical  skill  to  spread  a  tint  of  India  ink 
upon  the  prepared  surface,  was  no  easy 
task.  I  fancy  that  I  must  have  repeated 
that  drawing  at  least  a  half-dozen  times 
from  start  to  finish  before  I  at  length  ar- 
rived at  a  result  which  I  dared  to  submit 
to  my  editor.  Fortunately  it  was  found 
acceptable,  and  no  multi-millionaire  will 
ever  feel  the  satisfaction  in  cutting  off 
coupons  that  was  mine  when  I  was  paid 
fifty  dollars  for  my  work,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  thrill  of  approaching  glory,  inas- 
much as  it  was  considered  worthy  of 
publication. 

It  was  this  small  event,  however,  that 
had  a  determining  influence  on  my  ca- 
reer. It  was  decided  at  home  that  I  was 
to  be  allowed  to  study  in  New  York  for 
a  year,  when  there  came  a  sudden,  though 
fortunately  temporary,  crisis  in  the  family 
fortunes,  which  made  it  necessary  that  I 
should  begin  to  earn  my  living  at  once.  An 
opportunity  offered  immediately  through 

[50] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

a  friend  of  my  father's,  who  was  willing 
to  take  me  into  his  large  printing  and 
publishing  house,  and,  if  I  showed  ca- 
pacity, to  advance  me  rapidly.  It  was  a 
generous  offer,  and  as  my  parents  knew 
how  surely  it  assured  my  future,  it  must 
have  been  a  trial  when  I  begged  for  a 
few  weeks'  delay  in  which  I  proposed 
to  go  to  New  York  and  try  my  fortune, 
with  what  remained  to  me  of  the  sum 
received  for  my  first  accepted  drawing. 
I  had  treated  myself  generously  to  an 
assortment  of  artists'  materials  with  my 
first  earnings,  but  I  still  possessed  a 
capital  of  twenty-seven  dollars.  With 
that  I  set  out  for  New  York,  and,  with 
some  additions  to  this  amount,  I  have 
remained  there  ever  since — with  occa- 
sional absences  in  Europe. 

Here  I  must  pause  in  these  personal 
recollections,  though  I  wish  to  tell  later 
what  fortune  befell  me  in  our  Eastern 
metropolis.  Having  ventured  to  enumer- 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ate  so  many  trivial  incidents  of  my  child- 
hood, I  find  that  I  may  have  given  an  im- 
pression that  it  was  the  financial  future  of 
the  artist  which  chiefly  preoccupied  me. 
Necessity  knew  that  law  undoubtedly, 
and  I  could  parallel  my  story  by  those 
of  many  of  my  compatriot  friends  whose 
youth  knew  similar  conditions;  but  in 
all  these  cases  it  was  the  life  and  the 
work  of  the  artist  of  which  we  dreamed, 
and  I  know  of  none  who  for  a  moment 
imagined  that  wealth,  or  even  more  than 
the  most  modest  competency,  was  to  be 
found  along  that  road.  As  young  Ameri- 
cans, we  simply  obeyed  our  unwritten  law 
that  sends  a  youth,  often  ill-prepared,  out 
into  the  world  to  do  a  man's  work,  at  an 
age  when,  in  Europe,  he  at  the  most  has 
chosen  a  career,  and  set  himself  down 
for  a  long  preparation  to  fit  himself  to 
practise  it.  The  National  School  of  Fine 
Arts  in  Paris — the  Ecole  des  Beaux- Arts — 
limits  its  chief  prize  to  men  who  have 

[52] 


THE  AWAKENING  OF  VOCATION 

not  attained  the  age  of  thirty.  Up  to 
that  time  a  young  Frenchman  can  con- 
sider himself,  and  is  considered  by  others, 
as  preparing  for  his  life-work;  and  I  have 
known  many  a  man  of  forty  to  be  cur- 
rently spoken  of  as  a  garcon  d'avenir — a 
promising  youth. 

To  enforce  this  contrast  of  conditions  in 
the  Old  World  and  the  New  I  propose 
to  tell  the  life  story  of  a  peasant  youth 
who  attained  fame  in  that  pleasant  land 
of  France,  where  the  art  tradition  is 
firmly  welded  into  the  national  life.  In 
this  I  have  no  intention  of  drawing  a  dis- 
paraging contrast.  We  are  of  our  time, 
and  of  our  country,  and  the  American 
artist  has  the  world  before  him.  There 
are  conditions  here  by  which  we  profit 
largely,  and  as  I  have  already  said  we 
adopt  those  of  other  lands  that  we  find 
serviceable  and  make  them  our  own. 
But  for  our  young  art,  and  above  all  for 
our  young  artists,  there  is  profit  to  be 

[53] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

found  in  the  consideration  of  the  youth, 
the  education,  and  the  work  of  Paul 
Baudry. 


[54] 


II 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

IT  was  Laurence  Sterne  who  first  put 
into  words  the  sentiment,  which  by  over- 
quotation  has  now  become  trite,  that 
some  things  are  "ordered  better  in 
France"  than  elsewhere.  This  is  cer- 
tainly true  of  all  matters  aesthetic.  In  the 
accumulation  and  conservation  of  wealth, 
in  the  encouragement  of  industries  and 
commerce,  in  the  preservation  and  culti- 
vation of  the  natural  resources  of  its 
soil,  and  in  the  advancement  of  science, 
France  keeps  pace  with  the  highest 
modern  demands  of  civilisation.  At  the 
same  time  and  as  an  integral  part  of  its 
social  system,  art  and  letters  are  given  a 
more  honourable  place  than  in  any  other 

[55] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

country  of  the  world.  In  this  enlight- 
ened land  the  spiritual  efficiency  of  man 
counts  for  as  much  as  his  material  power, 
and  side  by  side  with  its  great  industrial, 
financial,  and  scientific  interests  the  pro- 
ductions of  its  architects,  painters,  sculp- 
tors, musicians,  poets,  dramatists,  and 
authors  are  fostered  and  protected.  To 
some  degree  this  is  an  affair  of  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  country,  especially  in  all 
the  initial  educational  processes;  which 
are,  however,  carried  beyond  the  limits  of 
the  schools,  and  by  a  system  of  rewards, 
definitely  known  as  "prizes  of  encourage- 
ment," the  earlier  efforts  of  the  artist 
and  author  are  helped  forward. 

But  even  more  important  than  this  sys- 
tematised  governmental  encouragement 
is  the  resulting  public  spirit  of  France, 
which  recognises  the  work  of  its  artists, 
musicians,  and  authors  as  an  asset  to  the 
national  wealth,  esteems  their  career  as 
among  the  most  useful  and  honourable 

[56] 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  THE  ARTIST 

pursuits  of  man,  and  by  material  and 
honorific  recognition  makes  place  for 
them  in  the  national  life. 
The  crass  ignorance  of  the  scope  and 
aim  of  the  artist,  which  may  be  found  here 
the  moment  one  steps  outside  of  a  very 
limited  circle,  is  found  nowhere  in  France. 
In  the  country,  among  the  peasantry, 
ignorant  though  they  may  be  of  any 
special  manifestation  of  art,  the  images  of 
their  churches,  a  chance  visit  to  the  near- 
est town  and  its  almost  universal  museum, 
or  an  innate  deference  for  any  work  of 
man  which  they  see  seriously  pursued, 
have  prepared  them  to  accept  the  artist 
and  his  work  with  respect,  if  without 
comprehension.  The  fairly  hostile  atti- 
tude of  the  ignorant  in  English-speaking 
countries,  which  so  frequently  greets  the 
artist,  seems  founded  on  a  belief  that  his 
work  is  hardly  worthy  as  the  life-effort 
of  a  grown  man;  and  when,  on  learning 
that  his  trivial  productions  are  sufficiently 

[57] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

esteemed  in  certain  circles  to  be  purchased 
and  preserved,  their  wonder  translates 
itself  into  the  query,  "  Where  do  you  find 
fools  to  buy  them?"  This  may  possibly 
be  an  aftermath  of  the  Reformation, 
which  in  these  countries  drove  art  from 
the  churches  and  from  the  life  of  the 
humble;  but  here  and  now,  as  we  mount 
the  social  scale,  we  find  that,  as  Mr. 
Kenyon  Cox,  in  a  public  address,  once 
put  it,  "The  majority  of  Americans  still 
feel  that  they  can  be  'fairly  comfortable' 
without  art." 

Not  so  in  France,  where  a  child  of 
humblest  source  will  find  even  among 
his  remote  parentage  or  from  his  fellow- 
villagers  encouragement  and  support,  if 
his  vocation  be  marked  for  any  of  the 
liberal  professions,  and  from  every  round 
of  the  social  ladder  hands  will  be  ex- 
tended to  help  him  Upward. 

He  was  a  fortunate  youth,  therefore,  who 
first  saw  the  light  of  day  on  the  27th  of 

[58] 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  THE  ARTIST 

November,  1828,  in  the  little  town  of 
La  Roche-sur-Yon,  and  was  given  the 
name  of  Paul  Baudry.  At  the  time  of  his 
birth  there  was  little  to  foretell  the  brill- 
iant future  to  which  he  was  destined, 
but  there  is  much  in  the  story  of  his 
earlier  years  to  mark  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  conditions  which,  even  now, 
confront  the  ugly  ducklings  of  our  art  as 
they  grow  their  plumes  on  their  swan- 
ward  way,  and  the  manner  in  which  such 
an  evolution  is  "ordered"  in  France. 

Baudry's  father  was  a  maker  of  wooden 
shoes,  the  sabots  of  the  countryside  in 
France,  and  in  the  pursuit  of  his  industry 
he  had  led  a  wandering  life.  In  the 
company  of  other  children  he  had  first 
watched  the  flocks  of  his  native  village 
until  it  was  time  for  him  to  learn  a  trade, 
when  he  was  literally  sent  into  the  woods 
as  apprentice  to  a  sabotier.  There  like  a 
gypsy  he  had  lived  until  in  turn,  his  trade 
acquired,  he  took  his  way  over  the  coun- 

[59] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

try  roads,  camping  in  the  vicinity  of  each 
village,  plying  his  craft  in  the  shelter  of 
the  trees  until  the  locality  was  furnished 
with  its  supply  of  wooden  shoes,  when  he 
would  take  his  simple  work-bench  and 
seek  a  new  field  of  industry.  As  Monsieur 
Eugene  Guillaume,  Director  of  the  Ecole 
Nationale  des  Beaux- Arts,  said  many 
years  after,  in  an  appreciative  notice  of 
Paul  Baudry's  work,  the  father  thus 
"passed  his  life  in  the  woods,  rising  with 
the  dawn,  influenced  by  the  passing  hours 
and  the  changing  weather,  in  closest 
touch  with  the  infinite  mysteries  of  nature, 
and  having,  as  chief  distraction  from  his 
toil,  his  violin  which  he  played  at  night 
under  the  stars." 

Surely  an  existence  like  this  was  in  some 
sense  a  preparation  for  the  advent  into 
the  world,  as  one  of  the  twelve  children  of 
this  pastoral  father,  of  a  son  who  was  an 
artist  from  his  birth.  The  nomadic  life  of 
the  elder  Baudry  had  ceased  upon  his 

^    [60] 


Paul  Baudry 

From  a  photograph 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

marriage,  when  he  established  himself 
at  La  Roche-sur-Yon,  a  small  town  of 
about  ten  thousand  inhabitants,  but  the 
wanderlust  of  his  earlier  years  persisted. 
This  desire  was  gratified  by  the  habit  of 
long  excursions  through  the  surrounding 
country,  and  from  among  his  numerous 
children  it  was  little  Paul  who  was  his 
chosen  companion.  Armed  with  fishing 
tackle  as  their  ostensible  excuse,  these 
recreant  anglers  were  above  all  devoted 
to  seeking  out  picturesque  sites,  and  to 
his  latest  years  the  painter  retained  the 
impress  of  the  sensations  then  experienced, 
and  avowed  that  from  his  father  he  had 
received  his  first  sense  of  the  beauties 
of  nature.  In  the  public  school  of  the 
town  meanwhile  the  little  Paul  was  win- 
ning such  modest  success  as  the  character 
of  the  school  permitted,  while  much  of 
his  leisure  at  home  was  given  to  the  study 
of  the  violin  in  obedience  to  the  desire  of 
his  father,  who  wished  him  to  become  a 

[61] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

musician.  Only  in  obedience,  however,  for 
another  form  of  art  engrossed  his  child- 
ish mind.  He  had  found  for  this  taste 
a  most  effective  ally  in  the  person  of  a 
local  artist  named  Antoine  Sartoris,  who 
served  as  the  drawing-master  in  the  school 
which  Paul  attended.  Sartoris  was  origi- 
nally a  plasterer  by  trade,  but  having  by 
economy  put  aside  enough  to  keep  him  in 
Paris  for  a  couple  of  years,  he  had  bravely 
abandoned  the  trowel,  and  entered  the 
atelier  of  Picot  to  study  painting.  His 
ambition  was  greater  than  his  talent,  and 
of  all  his  art  effort  the  memory  of  the  ser- 
vice he  rendered  Baudry  alone  survives. 
This  was  always  kept  in  mind  by  his 
grateful  pupil,  who,  to  the  end  of  his  life, 
when  all  the  honours  that  France  can  be- 
stow on  an  artist  were  his,  never  failed  to 
inscribe  himself  as  "pupil  of  Sartoris," 
in  the  Salon  catalogues,  along  with  the 
more  resounding  titles  of  Member  of  the 
Institute,  and  Commander  of  the  Legion 

F621 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

of  Honour,  which  custom  demanded. 
When  he  was  thirteen  his  father  re- 
nounced the  cherished  wish  to  make  a 
musician  of  his  son,  and  acceding  to 
Paul's  desire  placed  him  in  the  studio 
of  Sartoris.  "It  is  your  trade  I  wish  to 
learn,"  was  his  announcement  to  his 
good  friend,  in  unconscious  imitation  of 
Correggio's  cry:  "I,  too,  am  a  painter." 
Under  Sartoris's  direction  Baudry  re- 
mained three  years,  receiving  such  in- 
struction as  the  modest  painter  could  give 
him,  until  the  master  realised  that  this 
brilliant  pupil  had  grown  beyond  his  ca- 
pacity to  teach  him  further.  It  is  well  to 
bear  in  mind  the  small  resources  of  a  little 
provincial  town  such  as  was  La  Roche- 
sur-Yon,  yet  there  were  found  among 
its  inhabitants  those  who  followed  with 
interest  the  progress  of  this  little  lad  and 
who,  when  there  arrived  a  decisive  mo- 
ment in  his  career,  stood  ready  to  aid  him 
in  its  further  evolution. 

[63] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

Public  sentiment  and  the  constitution  of 
our  laws  forbid  with  us  the  expenditure 
of  public  funds  for  the  benefit  of  the  in- 
dividual, but  there  was  no  such  barrier 
to  prevent  Sartoris  from  addressing  the 
following  letter  to  the  Mayor  of  La  Roche- 
sur-Yon,  in  August,  1844: 

"Among  the  pupils  of  my  school  there  is 
one  Paul  Baudry,  aged  fifteen,  born  in  this 
city,  who  has  been  under  my  direction 
for  the  past  three  years,  and  has  greatly 
distinguished  himself.  He  is  a  youth  of 
decided  talent,  and  the  progress  which  he 
has  made  now  demands  that  his  future  art 
education  should  be  confided  to  masters 
of  greater  distinction  than  mine.  The 
parents  of  the  lad  are  not  in  a  position 
to  extend  him  aid,  but,  as  there  is  no 
doubt  of  his  fortunate  disposition  lead- 
ing him  to  a  high  place  in  art,  his  talent 
demands  that  his  future  progress  should 
be  assured;  for  it  is  our  duty  to  develop 
the  arts  by  every  possible  means.  I  there- 

[64] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

fore  solicit  that  you,  as  mayor  of  this 
city,  should  explain  this  situation  to  your 
municipal  council,  and  if  you  will  add  the 
influence  you  possess,  the  council  may  be 
disposed  to  grant  a  sum,  small  but  suffi- 
cient to  send  this  youth  to  Paris  to  become 
the  pupil  of  one  of  our  great  painters. 
The  municipal  council  will  undoubtedly 
seize  with  alacrity  the  opportunity  to 
encourage  art  in  the  person  of  this  child 
issued  from  the  cradle  of  our  city,  and 
destined  to  be  one  of  its  glories  hereafter, 
and  it  is  with  confidence  that  I  venture 
to  signalise  this  great  opportunity  to  the 
mayor  and  the  municipal  council  of  La 
Roche-sur-Yon." 

Did  not  our  laws  forbid,  a  petition  of 
this  nature  would  I  fear  appeal  more  to 
our  American  sense  of  humour  than  to  any 
other  sentiment,  if  it  were  addressed  to 
the  municipal  authorities  of  any  one  of  our 
cities,  little  or  great,  but  it  was  effective 
with  the  governing  powers  of  La  Roche- 
sur-Yon,  who  from  its  meagre  budget 

[65] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

promptly  voted  the  "small  but  sufficient" 
sum  that  enabled  Baudry  to  begin  his 
studies  in  Paris.  Sartoris's  appeal  was  in- 
deed typical  of  many  like  demands  which 
in  different  localities  in  France  have 
been  granted,  enabling  the  recipients  of 
municipal  encouragement  to  profit  by  the 
further  advantages  of  their  country's  sys- 
tem of  education. 

Here  I  am  tempted  to  resume  for  a  mo- 
ment my  own  personal  experiences  and  to 
tell  how  I,  at  one  period  of  my  studies, 
received  from  my  master,  Carolus-Duran, 
a  letter  somewhat  similar  to  that  just 
cited;  and  like  that,  in  the  intention  of 
my  master,  designed  to  be  presented  to 
the  municipal  authorities  of  my  native 
town.  It  was  at  a  time  in  Paris  when  I 
had  apparently  exhausted  every  resource 
of  a  private  nature,  and  was  obliged  to 
announce  to  my  master  my  impending 
departure  and  consequent  withdrawal 
from  his  influence. 

Not  the  least  of  the  gratitude  I  owe  him 

[66] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

is  for  the  kind  words  he  found  to  express 
his  regret  at  my  projected  departure. 
"But,"  he  urged,  "surely  your  city  should 
do  something  for  you,  since  you  have 
shown  considerable  progress  and  have 
already  exhibited  in  the  Salon."  I  tried 
in  vain  to  explain  that  our  cities  took  no 
such  parental  view  of  their  children  as 
did  those  of  France.  "I  am  sure,"  he  in- 
sisted, "that  if  I  wrote  a  letter,  explain- 
ing how  important  it  is  that  you  should 
remain  in  France  for  another  year  or  two, 
it  would  bring  some  result."  And  conse- 
quently he  wrote  a  letter  which,  if  less 
prophetic  in  tone  than  that  of  the  early 
master  of  Baudry,  contains  nevertheless 
such  proof  of  a  generous  intention  that 
I  look  at  its  pages,  yellowed  by  time,  even 
to-day,  with  a  grateful  heart.  It  seems 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  it  was  never 
submitted  to  the  common  council  of 
Albany,  but  it  is  pleasant  to  record,  since 
a  kind  action  deserves  reward,  that  it  was 

[671 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

influential  in  a  private  direction  in  pro- 
longing my  studies  in  Paris. 

Supported  by  the  grant  from  his  native 
city,  Baudry  went  to  Paris  and  entered 
the  atelier  of  Drolling,  a  painter  of  re- 
pute at  the  time.  The  general  interest  he 
had  excited  prompted  the  prefect  of  the 
Department  of  La  Vendee,  in  which  La 
Roche-sur-Yon  is  situated,  to  supplement 
his  meagre  allowance  from  public  funds 
at  his  disposal,  though  the  entire  amount 
was  only  sufficient  to  support  him  by  the 
strictest  economy. 

Filled  with  devotion  to  his  art,  the 
necessary  hardships  of  a  student's  life 
weighed  upon  Baudry  but  little,  and  in 
his  letters  to  his  parents  find  slight  men- 
tion. It  is  not  necessary  to  transcribe  his 
various  school  successes  during  the  next 
six  years,  but  in  the  competition  for  the 
Prix  de  Rome,  the  highest  reward  ob- 
tainable there,  he  succeeded  in  1850. 
During  these  years  his  city  and  his  de- 

[68] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

partment  had  stood  by  him,  and  if  only 
considered  from  a  financial  point  of  view, 
this  investment  in  a  future  reflected  glory 
was  far  from  a  financial  loss;  since  after- 
ward by  gifts  to  the  local  museum  of 
works  from  his  brush  Baudry  more  than 
repaid  the  sums  advanced. 

What  can  measure,  who  can  count,  the 
moral  return  of  the  assistance  lent  to  a 
gifted  son  of  this  little  town  ?  In  his  too 
short  life,  for  Paul  Baudry  died  before 
he  was  sixty,  his  upward  career  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  succeeding  generations  of 
the  place  of  his  nativity,  as  successively 
he  won  the  Prix  de  Rome  in  1850,  was 
awarded  a  first-class  medal  at  the  Salon 
in  1851,  was  given  the  cross  of  Chevalier 
of  the  Legion  of  Honour  in  1861,  and  in 
1869  that  of  officer,  honours  which  were 
followed  in  1870  by  his  election  as  Mem- 
ber of  the  Institute.  In  1875  came  his 
final  promotion  to  the  rank  of  Commander 
of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  and  in  1881  the 

[69] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

reward  of  which  he  was  the  most  proud: 
the  unanimous  vote  of  his  fellow-artists, 
who  that  year  for  the  first  time  awarded 
the  great  Medal  of  Honour  of  the  Salon 
to  the  painter  of  the  superb  decoration 
for  the  Palace  of  Justice — the  "Glorifi- 
cation of  Law."  Throughout  this  period 
one  after  another  of  his  numerous  works 
had  met  with  success. 

He  could  easily  have  amassed  a  great 
fortune,  as  the  favoured  portraitist  of  the 
brilliant  epoch  of  the  Second  Empire, 
and  in  fact  from  his  choice  among  the 
commissions  offered  him  there  remain  a 
series  of  masterly  portraits.  But  his  love 
for  pure  beauty  was  too  great,  his  fancy 
too  fecund,  to  restrain  his  effort  to  por- 
traiture alone,  and  there  resulted  from 
these  gifts  a  number  of  charming  pictures. 
One  of  these,  "The  Pearl  and  the  Wave," 
has  certainly  never  been  excelled  as  a 
vision  of  the  pure  beauty  of  the  nude 
since  the  days  of  Titian,  while  almost 

[701 


'The  Glorification  of  the  Law":     Ceiling  decoration  by 
Paul  Baudry  in  the  Cour  de  Cassation,  Paris 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

equally  notable  are  the  "Infant  St. 
John,"  "The  Toilet  of  Venus,"  or  "Diana 
Repulsing  Love."  These,  mere  titles  of 
apparently  trite  subjects  as  they  appear 
here,  are  in  reality  works  replete  with  a 
new  and  informing  sense  of  beauty, 
translated  by  technical  methods  which 
from  first  to  last  show  an  unceasing  pro- 
gression, keeping  pace  with  the  advance 
with  which  painting  has  been  enriched 
since  Baudry's  earlier  time  through  the 
efforts  of  the  so-called  Impressionists. 

The  high  ideal  which  Baudry  cherished 
controlled  his  action  when,  in  1865,  he  ac- 
cepted the  commission  for  the  decoration 
of  the  foyer  of  the  new  Opera  then  be- 
ing built  in  Paris.  He  was  at  the  height  of 
his  success,  in  favour  at  the  court,  and 
the  recipient  of  all  that  art-loving  Paris 
could  shower  upon  him,  when  this,  the 
most  important  decorative  work  of  mod- 
ern times,  was  proposed  to  him.  Its  ac- 
ceptance imposed  relinquishing  the  life  of 

[71] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

Paris  and  renouncing  all  its  material  ad- 
vantages, but  already  a  year  in  advance 
of  the  official  commission,  he  had  learned 
from  his  friend  and  former  companion  in 
Rome,  Charles  Garnier,  the  architect  of 
the  Opera,  that  the  task  was  reserved 
for  him,  and  he  had  set  about  to  pre- 
pare himself  for  it.  Closing  his  studio  in 
Paris  he  had  returned  to  Rome,  became 
once  more  an  inmate  of  the  Academic 
de  France,  in  the  Villa  Medici,  as  in  his 
student  days,  and  began  full-sized  copies 
of  several  of  the  panels  of  Michelange- 
lo's ceiling  in  the  Sistine  Chapel,  in  order 
fully  to  penetrate  the  secrets  of  the  mas- 
ter-decorator of  the  Renaissance. 

It  demands  a  nature  of  heroic  mould 
thus  to  renounce  the  pomps  and  vanities 
of  contemporary  success,  to  consecrate 
every  effort  to  a  long  and  painstaking 
preparation,  to  be  followed  by  the  equally 
conscientious  execution  of  so  great  a 
work.  Ten  long  years,  almost  without 

[72] 


THE  EDUCATION   OF  THE  ARTIST 

diversion  into  other  fields  of  production, 
did  Baudry  give  to  this  task,  refusing 
meanwhile  commissions  without  number 
and  working  for  the  glory  of  his  country — 
and  little  else.  Little  else  indeed,  for  we 
find  him  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  whimsi- 
cally computing  that  his  work  was  paid  at 
the  rate  of  forty-two  francs  fifty  centimes 
— about  eight  dollars — the  square  foot. 
The  whole  decoration,  comprising  three 
enormous  ceilings  and  twenty-four  pan- 
els of  varying  shapes  and  sizes,  covering 
in  all  over  three  thousand  five  hundred 
square  feet,  was  paid  only  twenty-eight 
thousand  dollars — a  sum  which  Baudry 
could  easily  have  earned  in  any  one  of  the 
ten  years  that  he  gave  to  this  work. 

The  history  of  art,  so  full  of  incidents  of 
works  accomplished  at  the  price  of  great 
sacrifices,  hardly  shows  a  more  notable 
instance  of  a  task  undertaken  as  a  public 
duty  than  this  effort  of  Baudry.  Easily 
master  of  his  craft  to  a  point  where  what- 

F731 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ever  he  would  have  been  willing  to  give 
would  have  been  accepted  by  his  public 
and  crowned  with  approbation,  he  ap- 
proached his  task,  not  with  timidity,  but 
with  a  single-hearted  determination  to 
add  to  his  equipment  of  acquired  knowl- 
edge all  that  the  most  searching  study  of 
great  preceding  works  would  yield.  In 
addition  to  the  eleven  full-sized  copies 
of  the  Sistine  Chapel  frescos,  painted  in 
Rome,  he  passed  the  evenings  of  an  en- 
tire winter  (1867-68)  in  laboriously  trac- 
ing upon  canvases  of  a  reduced  size  the 
cartoons  of  Raphael  now  in  the  South 
Kensington  Museum,  and  the  following 
summer  found  him  in  London,  working 
ten  or  twelve  hours  a  day  copying  upon 
these  prepared  canvases  every  detail  of 
these  famous  works.  Every  corner  of 
Europe  that  could  show  him  decorative 
work  was  also  visited,  and  the  drawings 
from  life,  repeated  studies  in  the  research 
of  action  that  models  failed  to  give,  the 

[741 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

composition  sketches,  and  the  adaptation 
of  these  to  form  a  harmonious  whole, 
constitute  in  themselves  a  mass  of  work 
that  would  almost  suffice  for  a  life  of 
endeavour. 

During  the  progress  of  the  work  the 
war  of  1870-71  alone  drew  him  away 
from  his  task,  when  shouldering  a  musket 
as  a  private  soldier  he  did  his  part  in  the 
heroic  defence  of  Paris,  passing  nights 
in  the  trenches,  suffering  from  cold  and 
hunger;  but  sustained  by  the  thought 
that  there,  no  less  than  upon  the  scaffold- 
ing before  his  great  canvases,  he  was 
doing  his  duty  for  his  country. 

At  last  in  1874  his  task  was  finished, 
and  before  being  put  in  place  the  great 
panels  were  exhibited  for  two  months  at 
the  Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts.  It  was  truly  a 
national  event  and,  thanks  to  the  devotion 
of  one  of  her  children,  France  had  added 
a  noble  work  to  her  many  treasures  of 
art.  No  student  who  was  present  in 

[75] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

France  at  that  time,  as  I  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be,  could  fail  to  take  the  lesson 
to  his  heart  that,  beyond  the  superb  ac- 
complishment of  a  noble  work — noble  in 
conception  and  noble  in  execution — there 
was  the  further  sentiment  of  noblesse 
oblige,  which  radiated  from  this  great 
achievement  of  one  who  at  every  step  of 
his  career  had  been  sustained  and  en- 
couraged by  his  people,  and  who  now 
repaid  the  debt  a  thousand-fold. 

"You  speak  most  kindly  of  me,  my  dear 
critic,"  wrote  Baudry  to  Emile  Bergerat, 
who  had  sent  him  a  studied  eulogium 
of  his  work,  "but  do  you  know  those  of 
your  many  kind  words  which  have  giv- 
en me  the  most  pleasure  ?  Those  that 
expressed  the  thought  you  have  had  to 
speak  of  me  as  a  Frenchman,  and  to 
award  to  our  beloved  country  what  little 
glory  I  might  pretend  to,  if  not  as  an 
artist,  at  least  as  her  devoted  and  loving 
child.  My  love  for  France  is  the  best 

[76] 


THE   EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

part  of  my  religion,  and  for  your  thought 
of  joining  my  name  to  hers  I  thank  you 
most  sincerely."  And  in  this  moment, 
when  virtually  his  whole  country  ap- 
plauded the  happy  termination  of  his  ef- 
fort, Baudry's  thoughts  went  back  to  the 
little  town  in  La  Vendee  which  had  stood 
by  him  in  his  youth.  The  entrance  fees 
to  the  exhibition  at  the  Beaux- Arts  were 
divided  among  various  art  societies  of  a 
charitable  nature,  but  Baudry  demanded 
and  obtained  that  a  portion — rather  larger 
than  the  amount  that  the  city  had  given 
him — be  awarded  to  the  poor  of  La 
Roche-sur-Yon. 

Ten  years  of  productive  life  were  alone 
to  remain  to  Baudry,  for  the  physical 
hardships  entailed  by  his  great  task  had 
told  upon  him.  They  were  ten  fruitful 
years,  marked  by  the  growth  of  a  nature 
which  up  to  that  time  had  shown  a  faith- 
ful allegiance  to  the  precepts  of  the  long 
line  of  great  painters  whom  Baudry  had 

[771 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

so  faithfully  studied.  Now  in  full  posses- 
sion of  his  powers,  nature  made  a  stronger 
appeal,  and  though  his  fidelity  to  the  past 
had  not  proven  a  hindrance  to  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  present,  and  though  not 
only  in  his  portraits  but  also  in  his  pict- 
ures and  decorative  works  his  types  had 
been  of  his  time,  he  now  developed  a  new 
and  fresher  sense  of  light  and  colour.  As 
with  many  other  painters  in  progress,  he 
here  left  some  of  his  contemporaries  in 
a  quandary,  they  hardly  recognising  the 
work  which  his  new  vision  impelled  him 
to  create  as  equal  to  his  earlier  effort. 
Jules  Breton,  one  of  his  earliest  friends 
and  a  great  admirer  of  his  work,  regrets 
the  years  that  Baudry  consecrated  to  the 
Opera,  as  robbing  contemporary  painting 
of  the  many  charming  pictures  that  he 
might  have  produced  during  that  time, 
and  deplores  that  the  habits  then  formed 
gave  to  Baudry  the  freer  brush,  the  larger 
style  of  the  decorator,  and  lost  for  him 

[78] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

the  more  suave  qualities  of  his  former 
manner. 

It  was  but  another  instance  of  Baudry's 
courage  and  devotion  and,  had  longer 
life  been  accorded  him,  we  should  have 
seen  a  master  possessed  of  all  that  sci- 
entific research  and  departure  from  ac- 
cepted conventions  of  colour  have  given 
to  the  modern  painter,  allied  to  the  sense 
of  style,  the  accurate  knowledge  of  form, 
and  the  comprehensive  grasp  of  decora- 
tive line  and  composition  that  were  al- 
ready his. 

It  is  interesting  to  follow  in  Baudry's 
work  this  evolution  as  manifested  in  the 
repetition  of  one  of  his  favourite  compo- 
sitions, that  of  "Diana  Repulsing  Love." 
One  might  fancy  that  the  master  had 
taken  this  theme  as  a  test  of  his  successive 
theories  of  colour,  for  in  the  exhibition 
held  in  1886  at  the  Ecole  des  Beaux- Arts, 
in  which,  shortly  after  his  death,  were 
shown  all  that  were  obtainable  of  his 

[79] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

portraits  and  easel  pictures,  there  were 
three  or  four  replicas  of  this  subject, 
varying  little  in  composition  and  form, 
but  greatly  in  effect  of  light  and  colour. 
In  the  earliest,  painted  in  1864,  the  in- 
dignant goddess,  with  arm  upraised  ready 
to  chastise  a  most  mischievous  Cupid,  is 
of  a  fine  amber  tint,  her  lithe  figure  every- 
where relieved  by  a  dark  background  of 
woods;  a  composition  in  effect  of  colour 
visibly  inspired  by  Titian  and  the  Vene- 
tian masters.  In  successive  repetitions, 
in  1877  and  '79,  Diana  emerges  in  tones 
more  nacreous,  and  the  density  of  the 
background  permits  a  ray  of  light  to  pene- 
trate here  and  there.  But  Baudry's  final 
effort,  where  even  in  form  the  figure  of  the 
Huntress  is  more  slight  and  finer  in  action, 
is  everywhere  permeated  by  the  light  of 
day.  The  air  circulates  around  Diana, 
Cupid  visibly  soars  athwart  the  foliage 
which  rustles  in  the  breeze,  and  there  are 
no  figures  more  living  and  breathing, 

[80] 


Photo  by  Braun,  Clement  &  Co. 

"Diana  Repulsing  Love,"  by  Paul  Baudry,  1882 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

in  an  atmosphere  more  livable  and 
breathable,  than  in  this  last  rendition  of 
a  favourite  subject,  which  bears  the  date 
of  1882. 

It  was  in  the  full  flush  of  progression 
in  the  art  to  which  he  had  consecrated 
a  noble  and  useful  endeavour  that  Paul 
Baudry  was  taken  on  January  17,  1886, 
and  his  place  in  modern  art  is  not  yet 
fully  recognised.  Misled  by  his  constant 
allegiance  to  the  schools,  not  only  to  those 
of  his  country  to  which  he  owed  so  much, 
but,  in  another  sense,  those  of  the  great 
galaxy  of  masters  by  whose  precepts  he 
profited,  too  many  critics  consider  him 
only  as  a  result  of  academical  training. 
On  the  other  hand,  since  the  academ- 
ical powers  of  his  country  delighted  to 
honour  him,  he  is  often  referred  to  as 
possessing  merely  "official"  talent. 

But  there  was  never  a  moment  in  his 
career  when  he  was  not  alive  to  the  world 
about  him;  and  his  art,  cast  voluntarily 

[81] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

in  the  mould  of  the  great  preceding 
masters,  he  was  able  to  rejuvenate  and 
revivify  by  his  intimate  sense  of  the  beauty 
which  his  eyes  sought  and  found  in  the 
types  of  contemporary  life.  Ardent  stu- 
dent of  Raphael,  like  that  master  he 
painted  from  "a  certain  beautiful  lady 
who  lived  in  his  memory,"  but  the  memory 
was  of  a  living  type  and  not  that  of  an 
ideal  built  up  from  other  works  of  art. 
In  his  portraits  one  could  easily  follow  not 
only  the  changing  fashions  of  art,  which 
caused  him  to  paint  M.  Guizot  in  1860 
with  all  the  severity  of  an  Ingres,  but  the 
changing  types  of  humanity  that  evolve 
during  a  generation.  Thus  his  portrait  of 
Madame  Bernstein  and  her  son  in  1883 
is  a  human  document  denoting  the  pres- 
ence in  France  at  that  period  of  a  lux- 
uriant Israelitic  type,  depicted  with  a 
knowledge  of  painting  that  allowed  his 
brush  to  fairly  incise  the  Byzantine  or- 
nament of  the  chair  on  which  the  lady  sits, 

[82] 


Mme.  Bernstein  and  her  son,  Robert,  by  Paul  Baudry 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

and  then  to  flow  with  easy  competence 
over  the  rich  stuffs  of  her  costume,  while 
the  whole  is  dominated  by  the  life  and  ex- 
pression of  the  heads  of  the  mother  and 
child.  If  greater  portraits  than  these,  and 
others  of  Baudry's  production,  have  been 
painted  in  the  nineteenth  century  I  know 
them  not. 

Great  as  was  the  effort,  notable  as  is 
the  success  of  the  great  decorations  of 
the  new  Opera,  the  intention,  the  style 
of  individual  figures,  and  certain  of  the 
panels  which  are  vastly  superior  to  the 
others,  do  not  suffice  to  prevent  the  whole 
achievement  from  taking  a  secondary 
place  in  Baudry's  work,  in  comparison 
with  other  of  his  later  decorations.  It  is 
doubtful  if  any  painter,  even  Paul  Vero- 
nese, who  so  successfully  vanquishes  the 
overpowering  mouldings  in  which  his 
work  is  set  in  the  Ducal  Palace  in  Venice, 
could  have  overcome  the  unfortunate 
scale  and  weight  of  the  gilded  mould- 

[83] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ing  which  Gamier  saw  fit  to  provide  for 
Baudry's  panels  in  the  ceiling  of  the  foyer 
of  the  new  Opera. 

In  any  case  it  is  the  memory  of  his  work, 
as  seen  before  it  was  fixed  in  place,  that 
abides  with  me.  In  its  definite  setting 
the  decoration  appears  confused  in  parts, 
and  lacking  in  the  definition  of  its  pattern 
as  a  whole;  which  is  perhaps  the  first 
and  most  essential  quality  of  a  mural 
painting. 

This  may  be  due  in  a  measure  to  the 
height  at  which  the  works  are  seen,  and 
even  more  to  the  shape  and  weight  of 
their  framing,  but  it  was  Baudry's  task 
to  overcome  these  conditions  and  in  this 
he  has  partly  failed.  The  only  other 
painter  to  whom  Baudry  can  be  at  all 
compared  in  our  time  is  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes,  and  he,  though  not  possessed  of 
a  tithe  of  Baudry's  virtuosity,  has  never 
failed  in  this  important  quality  of  making 
his  pattern  clear. 

[84] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  Baudry  per- 
ceived his  error,  for  in  other  and  later 
works  no  one  has  surpassed  him  as  a 
decorator. 

Fortunately  there  remain  some  half- 
dozen  works,  notably  the  great  "Glorifi- 
cation of  the  Law,"  which,  possessing  all 
the  merits  of  beautiful  design,  presenta- 
tion of  types  of  austere  dignity,  exquisite 
feminine  charm,  and  graceful  artlessness 
of  childhood,  as  well  as  vibrating  colour, 
will  serve  to  show  to  all  time  that,  from 
the  tiny  panel  portraits  where  he  emulates 
Clouet,  up  to  these  great  works  in  direct 
lineage  from  Veronese,  Paul  Baudry  was 
of  the  race  of  great  artists. 

I  have  been  led  far  afield  in  the  considera- 
tion of  Baudry's  later  life  and  work,  and 
have  said  too  little  of  the  man  or  rather 
of  the  youth;  for  it  is  from  his  earlier 
years  that  we  can  draw  profitable  reflec- 
tion for  our  present  purposes. 

We  have  seen  that  from  the  first  he  set 

[85] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

his  purpose  high,  but  it  may  well  be  a 
matter  of  conjecture  how  it  was  possible 
for  a  little  peasant  boy,  who  hardly  re- 
ceived the  rudiments  of  what  we  consider 
education,  to  arrive  even  in  his  extreme 
youth  at  so  clear  a  perception  of  the  no- 
bler aims  of  art.  It  is  also  cause  for  won- 
der how  he  was  able  to  express  himself 
so  intelligently  and  with  such  choice  of 
language  as  even  his  earliest  letters  show. 
Before  he  was  thirteen  he  was  working 
in  the  studio  of  Sartoris,  and  presumably 
engrossed  in  an  absorbing  study,  which 
offers  to  the  neophyte  so  many  and  va- 
rious technical  difficulties  that  time  for 
or  thought  of  general  education  must  be 
put  aside. 

Not  long  ago,  in  the  Fellowship  existing 
in  the  schools  of  the  Pennsylvania  Acad- 
emy of  the  Fine  Arts,  there  was  proposed 
for  debate  the  following  question :  "Should 
artists  receive  a  liberal  education  outside 
of  their  art?"  I  have  not  learned  the 

[86] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

result  of  this  debate,  and  do  not  con- 
sequently know  the  solution  of  this  prob- 
lem as  determined  by  it.  But  it  is  evi- 
dent that  every  element  which  can  enter 
into  an  artist's  life  and  broaden  his  under- 
standing is  an  influence  for  good,  and 
that  his  work  will  profit  thereby. 

It  is  equally  evident,  however,  that  the 
acquirement  of  a  thorough  training  is  a 
matter  of  years,  and  that  its  primary 
requirements  can  best  be  attained  when 
the  student  is  extremely  young,  docile  un- 
der direction,  and  unaware  of  the  delights 
of  production;  which,  as  soon  as  the 
imagination  awakes,  prompt  him  to  build 
however  insecure  may  be  the  foundation. 

"Catch  your  artist  young"  might  well 
be  an  axiom  for  our  art  schools;  though 
there  are  notable  examples  of  eminent 
artists  who  have  been  exceptions  to  this 
rule.  Paul  Dubois,  the  great  French 
sculptor,  whose  "Jeanne  d'Arc"  and  a 
long  series  of  masterly  works  have  placed 

[87] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

him  in  the  first  rank  of  modern  art,  and 
whose  position  was  officially  confirmed 
by  service  for  many  years  as  Director  of 
the  Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts,  was  twenty-six 
years  old  when  he  abandoned  the  pro- 
fession of  civil  engineer,  for  which  he  had 
been  educated,  to  follow  art.  Jean  Fran- 
£ois  Millet  had  attained  the  age  of  twenty- 
one  before  Paris  afforded  him  his  first 
serious  opportunity  for  study.  To  come 
nearer  home  and  to  take  an  example 
from  an  American  artist,  who  here  and 
abroad  has  won  his  place  as  a  master, 
John  La  Farge  had  graduated  from  col- 
lege and  passed  his  majority,  before  a 
visit  to  Paris  had  awakened  the  dormant 
vocation  that  has  had  such  a  notable  in- 
fluence upon  the  art  of  this  country. 

Upon  the  other  hand  I  remember  as 
though  it  were  yesterday  the  advent  of 
John  Sargent  into  the  little  studio  world 
which  we  knew  in  Paris  in  1874 — those 
of  us  who  were  enlisted  as  the  pupils 

[88] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

of  Carolus-Duran.  I  can  see  the  slim 
youth  of  seventeen,  his  arms  entwined 
around  a  formidable  roll  of  studies  which, 
when  disclosed  to  the  eyes  of  the  master, 
caused  him  to  exclaim,  "You  have  stud- 
ied much,"  and  then,  with  the  caution 
which  made  "not  too  bad"  the  highest 
praise  lavished  on  a  student's  work,  he 
added,  "Much  that  you  have  learned  you 
must  forget." 

This  remarkable  package  contained  a 
little  of  everything  which  a  youth  of 
pronounced  artistic  talent,  encouraged 
by  every  influence  that  could  be  brought 
to  bear  upon  his  budding  genius,  could 
produce  before  the  second  decade  of  his 
life  was  completed — a  life  begun  and 
continued  under  the  stimulating  forces  of 
Italy — the  birth  land  of  painting  to  our 
modern  view.  I  can  remember  how  we 
crowded  around  our  new  comrade  that 
was  to  be,  as  one  by  one  he  showed  the 
master  drawings  innumerable,  drawings 

[89] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

from  life,  from  the  antique,  and  careful 
studies  of  Swiss  scenery  that,  in  their 
knowledge  of  the  handling  of  the  lead- 
pencil,  recalled  the  lithographed  work 
of  Calame.  There  were  paintings  from 
the  nude,  portrait  studies,  and  copies  in 
oil,  water-colour  studies  after  Tintoretto, 
Titian,  and  Carpaccio,  brilliant  sketches 
in  the  same  medium  of  scenes  and  figures 
in  Venice,  Florence,  and  Rome.  It  might 
have  been  said  of  him,  as  it  was  said  of 
Alfred  de  Musset  at.  thirty,  "He  had  a 
splendid  past  behind  him,"  and  Sargent 
was  barely  seventeen. 

His  subsequent  career  in  the  Atelier 
Duran  was  one  of  successive  triumphs, 
which  have  since  continued,  as  we  all 
know. 

Of  course  we  are  here  dealing  with  a 
phenomenal  nature,  which,  so  far  as  con- 
temporary judgment  can  determine,  has 
infrequently  been  surpassed  in  the  whole 
long  history  of  our  craft;  but  some  part 

[90] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

of  Sargent's  early  attainment  of  a  position 
second  to  none  in  the  field  of  modern 
art  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the  fact  that 
at  an  age  when  the  majority  of  students 
are  taking  their  first  uncertain  steps 
along  the  thorny  path  of  technical  achieve- 
ment, he  was  able  to  walk  firmly,  con- 
scious that  he  was  equipped  for  the 
march.  It  may  be  simply  a  further  indi- 
cation of  an  exceptional  temperament  to 
record  that  this  Admirable  Crichton  of 
our  arts  had  found  time,  even  at  this 
early  age  and  in  his  absorption  of  the 
primary  requirements  of  his  chosen  voca- 
tion, to  become  fluent  in  four  languages, 
Italian,  German,  French,  and  English, 
to  be  a  fairly  accomplished  musician,  and 
to  have  acquired  a  general  knowledge  of 
literature;  in  a  word,  to  be  much  further 
advanced  in  his  general  education  than 
most  youths  of  his  age.  The  capacity  of 
acquiring  a  fund  of  information  that 
fits  a  man  to  take  his  place  in  general 

[91] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

society  is  in  no  wise  dependent  upon  a 
scholastic  training,  fortunately,  although 
an  education  thus  gleaned,  in  the  mo- 
ments when  a  growing  intelligence  is  cen- 
tred upon  some  one  absorbing  vocation, 
may  leave  curious  lapses — lapses  calcu- 
lated to  make  the  pedagogue  weep. 

Listen,  for  instance,  to  this  confession 
of  the  mature  age  of  Jean  Fra^ois 
Millet,  as  confided  to  his  biographer 
Alfred  Sensier: 

"I  never  was  able  to  follow  the  ordi- 
nary methods  of  instruction.  In  the  lit- 
tle school  where  my  infancy  was  passed, 
what  I  wrote  from  dictation  was  thought 
to  be  better  expressed  than  the  exercises 
of  my  school-fellows.  This  was  probably 
for  the  reason  that  I  had  a  passion  for 
reading  everything  that  fell  in  my  way, 
and  well-turned  phrases  and  certain  words 
became  fixed  in  my  sight,  rather  than  in 
my  mind,  and  I  reproduced  them  in- 
stinctively. Never  have  I  followed  set 

[92] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

rules,  never  did  I  learn  a  lesson  by  heart. 
Left  largely  to  myself,  most  of  my  time 
was  passed  with  my  copybooks  tracing 
ornamental  letters  or  drawing  pictures. 
I  never  was  able  to  get  beyond  addition 
in  arithmetic;  even  to-day  subtraction  is 
a  mystery  to  me  and  the  higher  mathe- 
matics totally  unknown.  I  am  still  forced 
to  make  all  calculations  by  my  reasoning 
powers,  intuitively,  in  a  manner  which  I 
can  hardly  explain." 

Yet  this  untutored  peasant  was  a  mas- 
ter of  his  language;  certain  pages  of  his 
in  French  rival  those  on  which  another 
great  uncultured  man,  the  American, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  inscribed  his  thoughts 
in  immortal  English.  Each  for  that  mat- 
ter had  gone  to  the  same  source  for  the 
inspiration  of  their  written  style,  to  the 
Bible. 

In  truth  the  little  peasant  boy,  who  had 
taught  himself  to  read,  had  been  led  by 
the  influence  of  the  parish  priest  to 

[93] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

study  Latin,  and  it  was  in  this  language 
that  the  two  books  with  which  he  was  the 
most  familiar,  the  Bible  and  Virgil,  were 
habitually  read  by  him  through  life. 
We  find  in  his  letters  a  constant  use  of 
this  language,  not  serving  a  pedantic 
purpose,  but  quoted  naturally  as  one  uses 
a  living  tongue. 

Despite  the  lacks  noted  above  it  would 
be  absurd  to  call  a  man  like  this  ill-edu- 
cated; although,  between  the  labour  in 
the  fields  of  his  earlier  day  and  the  pre- 
occupation with  the  problems  of  his  art 
in  later  years,  place  had  never  been  found 
for  the  ordinary  scholastic  course. 

The  study  and  production  of  the  artist's 
profession,  especially  as  understood  in 
Europe,  constitutes  in  itself  a  liberal  edu- 
cation, and  he  is  a  dullard  indeed  who 
arrives  at  a  respectable  proficiency  in 
art  without  having  gleaned  by  the  way 
a  fairly  good  education. 

This  alone  explains  how  Paul  Baudry 

[94] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

was  able  in  the  most  cultured  circles  of 
supercultured  Paris  to  meet  men  upon 
an  equal  footing.  Millet,  living  in  isola- 
tion in  the  country,  with  abundant  time  to 
read  and  willingly  limiting  his  interests  to 
his  painting,  his  garden,  and  a  few  of  the 
classic  authors,  was  never  called  upon  to 
make  and  hold  a  place  in  the  volatile 
world  of  Paris — a  world  where  the  keenest 
perception  of  intellectual  values  is  neces- 
sary in  the  parry  and  thrust,  the  assault 
and  defence  by  which  one  wins,  and 
keeps,  rank  within  the  charmed  circle 
of  "Tout  Paris." 

Baudry  was  endowed  with  a  retentive 
memory  and,  like  many  others  possessed 
of  the  artistic,  imaginative  temperament, 
he  was  an  omnivorous  reader.  The  offi- 
cial programme  of  the  schools  to  which  he 
adhered  so  closely  in  his  earlier  years 
called,  moreover,  for  many  subsidiary 
studies  besides  the  actual  work  in  the 
ateliers.  A  tolerable  knowledge  of  history, 

[95] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

a  general  acquaintance  with  forms  of 
art  kindred  to  painting,  with  mythology 
and  with  classic  literature,  are  all  sooner 
or  later  called  for  from  the  student  who 
enters  the  various  competitions  estab- 
lished by  the  national  system  of  art  edu- 
cation. There  is,  moreover,  in  all  the 
intellectual  activities  of  the  French  a 
tradition  of  thoroughness,  which  imposes 
upon  even  the  least  gifted  of  its  sons  who 
proposes  to  enter  the  lists  of  the  liberal 
professions  a  duty  of  accurate  and  com- 
plete preparation  for  the  task.  In  the 
case  of  so  brilliant  a  mind  and  so  retentive 
a  memory  as  Baudry's,  there  must  have 
been  many  side  issues  and  subsidiary 
facts  which  he  made  his  own  in  the 
pursuit  of  the  allotted  themes  laid  down 
in  the  programmes  of  these  various  com- 
petitions. As  in  his  Paris  days  in  the  Ate- 
lier Drolling,  so  was  he  alert  during  the 
four  years  that  he  studied  in  the  Villa 
Medici  after  winning  the  Prix  de  Rome. 

[96] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

In  this  latter  stage  of  his  education  he 
was  especially  fortunate,  for  the  Eternal 
City  then  saw  many  pilgrims  of  high 
intellectual  worth,  and,  as  his  letters 
show,  Baudry  profited  by  his  privileges 
as  pensionnaire  of  France  to  frequent 
their  society  and  cull  from  each  some 
profit. 

He  was  keenly  conscious  of  the  high 
place  to  which  he  might  aspire,  and  in  one 
of  his  letters  home  written  during  this 
first  sojourn  in  Rome  he  recalls  the  rainy 
night  when  he  first  left  his  parents'  house 
bound  for  Paris.  With  a  sympathetic 
glance  backward  to  his  ambitions  at  the 
age  of  thirteen,  he  tells  his  father  how  he 
stopped  for  a  moment  before  the  statue 
of  some  local  celebrity  and,  striking  his 
youthful  breast  with  Gallic  enthusiasm, 
vowed  to  return  some  day  to  la  Roche- 
sur-Yon  "a  man  grown,  possessing  talent, 
loving  his  kind  and  serving  them."  And 
again:  "My  life  appears  to  me  like  a 

[97] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

drama:  The  curtain  rises  upon  a  rustic 
cabin,  the  fire  blazes  in  the  chimney  and 
the  spiders  have  woven  their  webs  athwart 
the  rafters;  then  the  scene  changes,  and 
is  replaced  by  this  palace  in  Rome. 
This  is  the  second  act,  the  third  remains 
to  be  seen ;  it  is  the  good  Lord  who  directs 
the  theatre  and  none  may  know  what  the 
end  of  the  play  may  be.  In  any  case  the 
actor  or,  to  drop  allegory,  your  son, 
will  live  contented  under  any  conditions, 
if  only  he  be  permitted  to  paint  good 
pictures — and  to  make  you  happy." 

It  may  be  said  that  I  have  chosen  my 
examples  of  men  who,  devoted  to  their 
art,  have  achieved  their  general  education 
along  the  way,  from  among  those  of 
exceptional  talent  and  exceptional  intelli- 
gence. 

But  it  is  our  evident  duty  at  the  outset  of 
life  to  "hitch  our  wagon  to  a  star,"  and 
the  examples  I  have  chosen  show  that 
no  help,  save  that  which  we  can  find 

[98] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

within  ourselves,  will  guide  us  along  the 
starry  ways  of  high  achievement.  The  task 
is  more  difficult  as  yet  on  our  side  of  the 
water,  for  centuries  of  tradition  have 
certainly  "ordered"  fuller  opportunities 
for  the  spiritual  life  of  the  artist  in  the 
Old  World.  But  on  the  other  hand,  we 
have  the  opportunity  of  creating  a  new, 
and  possibly  better,  tradition  here  at 
home.  Our  material  opportunities  are 
many  times  greater  than  in  Europe.  There 
every  way  is  blocked,  every  prize  has 
hundreds  of  hands  extended  to  grasp 
it,  and  the  whole  struggle  for  life  is 
fiercer  and  more  tragic  than  anything 
that  we  as  yet  know  here. 

Our  most  serious  obstacle  is  the  lack  of 
a  high  standard,  not  alone  in  the  execu- 
tion of  our  work  but  in  its  definite  aim. 
In  our  habit  of  beginning  where  others 
leave  off  we  too  often  accept  a  result, 
without  thought  or  inquiry  of  the  means 
that  have  brought  it  about,  and  our  al- 

[99] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

leged  progression  is  too  often  superficial 
imitation. 

There  is  no  royal  road  to  good  art,  we 
must  painfully  and  honestly  follow  the 
road  that  others  have  trod  and,  as  we 
cannot  possibly  know  what  dangers  there 
are  ahead,  nor  whither  the  road  ends, 
it  is  well  at  least  to  know  where  it  began ; 
so  that  if  we  find  ourselves  straying  from 
the  path  we  may  at  least  retrace  our  steps 
and  begin  our  march  anew.  Above  all  we 
must  set  out  with  courage,  for  it  is  no  holi- 
day excursion:  "In  art  we  must  be  pre- 
pared to  leave  our  skin  upon  the  thorns 
which  beset  our  path,"  has  said  Millet, 
and  I  cannot  better  conclude  than  with  a 
final  citation  from  this  courageous  and 
gifted  master,  which  is  as  applicable  to 
the  aim  which  we  should  cherish  here  at 
home  as  it  was  to  that  of  the  Old  World 
when  painting  there  was  at  its  best.  "You 
are  of  the  few  who  believe  (so  much  the 
worse  for  the  others)  that  every  art  is  a 
[100] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  ARTIST 

language  and  that  a  language  has  been 
given  us  to  express  our  thoughts.  Say  it 
and  repeat  it,  it  may  make  converts  and, 
if  more  people  realised  it,  we  should  see 
fewer  painters  and  authors  whose  works 
say  nothing.  Technical  achievement  is 
alone  supposed  to  be  clever,  and  those 
who  practise  their  art  in  this  manner  re- 
ceive all  the  plaudits  of  the  day. 

"But  in  good  faith  and  if  the  hand  be 
really  clever  should  it  not  be  employed 
to  express  something  worth  while — and 
then  hide  its  cleverness  behind  the  work 
accomplished  ?" 


101 


Ill 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF- 
SUPPORT 

THERE  is  no  graver  question  that  con- 
fronts the  earlier  years  of  the  artist  than 
the  effort  to  become  self-supporting,  for 
it  is  axiomatic  that  like  the  rest  of  man- 
kind the  artist  must  first  demonstrate  that 
he  will  not  become  a  charge  upon  society 
before  he  has  the  right  to  think  of  art  for 
art's  sake.  His  earlier  years  in  the  school 
may  be  free  from  this  care.  If,  like 
Baudry,  he  is  of  a  land  that  shows  a 
parental  interest  in  his  vocation,  he  may 
put  off  the  day  when  his  art  must  earn  his 
bread  for  a  longer  period  than  is  usual 
with  us;  and,  even  in  our  country,  if 
the  student's  family  be  blessed  with  both 
f  1021 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

fortune  and  patience,  giving  him  the 
means  to  prosecute  his  studies  and  not 
demanding  immediate  results,  he  may 
dream  the  dream  of  art  for  art's  sake 
for  a  comparatively  long  period.  But 
sooner  or  later  the  day  comes  when  the 
portals  of  the  school  are  closed  behind 
him,  and  he,  outside  among  men,  doing 
the  work  of  men,  must  "make  good." 

In  many  ways,  and  certainly  in  all  his 
highest  aspirations,  the  artist  is  closely 
akin  to  the  poet.  Quite  as  certainly  a 
youth  who  should  propose  to  earn  his 
living  by  writing  poetry  would  find  that 
the  current  newspaper  jokes  concerning 
verse  as  an  article  of  commerce  were 
based  upon  a  solid  stratum  of  fact. 
There  have  been  a  few  mortals  who, 
after  managing  to  subsist  by  other  means 
until  they  had  created  a  demand  for  their 
poetic  wares,  have  coined  gold  from  the 
twanging  of  their  lyres,  as  Homer,  we 
are  told,  was  supported  by  a  grateful 

[103] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

public  while  chanting  his  Iliad  from  door 
to  door;  but  customs  have  changed  since 
then,  and  to-day  the  higher  forms  of  po- 
etry, and  to  some  extent  those  of  art, 
are  gratuitous  offerings  laid  upon  the 
altar  of  the  Muses. 

Consequently  the  artist  who  says  to  him- 
self: "Go  to,  I  will  now  produce  a  work 
which  shall  exist  for  itself,  which  will  show 
the  world  not  only  how  proficient  I  am 
in  my  art,  but  will  fill  a  long-felt  want 
in  satisfying  that  hunger  for  beauty, 
sweetness,  and  light  that  has  existed  for 
ages,"  and  who  then  produces  an  unre- 
lated, isolated  picture  or  statue,  will  find 
himself  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
times  in  a  thousand  baffled  in  his  en- 
deavour. Yet  the  world  is  full  of  uses  for 
the  artist,  and  may  even,  if  he  be  the 
thousandth  man,  accept  him  in  his  highest 
endeavour,  and  at  once.  But  such  cases 
are  so  rare  that  we  should  be  manifestly 
ill  inspired  if  we  based  the  practice  of 

[104], 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

our  ancient  craft  upon  such  a  slender 
foundation.  He  is  not  the  less  noble 
therefore  if  he  bends  his  art  to  the 
beauty  of  use,  retaining  meanwhile  all 
his  high  aspirations  and  making  of  each 
work  a  progressive  step  toward  a  freer 
and  fuller  expression  of  these  higher 
ideals. 

The  artist  is  in  fact  more  fortunate  than 
the  poet,  inasmuch  as  his  method  of  ex- 
pression is  by  the  work  of  his  hands  and 
constitutes  a  craft  for  which  the  world 
finds  many  uses.  We  have  indeed  numer- 
ous examples  in  our  art  of  men  grad- 
uating from  the  humblest  occupations, 
where  the  artists'  knowledge  has  found 
commercial  demand,  to  the  higher  walks 
of  their  profession,  where  their  produc- 
tion is  esteemed  at  its  full  value.  I  know 
of  two  of  our  prominent  artists  of  to-day 
who  for  years  supported  themselves  by 
retouching  photographs.  Meanwhile  their 
painting,  kept  apart  and  produced  with- 

[105] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

out  thought  of  gain,  gradually  won  its 
way,  until  now  they  are  able  to  give  all 
their  effort  to  the  demonstration  of  their 
best  ability.  Those  who  make  of  illustra- 
tion a  stepping-stone  in  their  career  are 
legion  and  for  good  illustrations  there  is 
always  a  commercial  demand. 

The  young  painters  and  sculptors  who 
find  in  the  studios  of  older  men  employ- 
ment as  assistants  in  works  of  sculpture 
or  of  mural  painting  are  fortunate,  for 
their  bread- winning  gives  them  a  post- 
graduate education  in  a  workshop  where 
the  problems  of  practice  are  solved 
daily.  This  resembles  the  apprenticeship 
which  Raphael  served  with  Perugino,  or 
Van  Dyck  in  the  studio  of  Rubens; 
though  it  is  to  be  noted  that  modern 
conditions  favour  the  student  of  to-day 
more  than  his  prototype  of  earlier  time. 
In  the  studios  of  olden  time  the  appren- 
tice served  not  only  without  remuneration, 
but  he  paid  a  premium  to  the  master  as 

[106] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

well;  whereas  to-day  these  conditions  are 
reversed.  Work  for  lithographers,  design- 
ing and  painting  stained  glass,  designing 
book  covers,  wall  paper,  carpets,  or  tis- 
sues, are  all  open  to  students  of  art;  and 
a  State  capitol  comes  to  mind,  whose 
carved  lintels  kept  a  young  artist  busy 
with  mallet  and  chisel  during  the  summer 
months,  and  paid  the  way  for  the  four 
winters  in  which  he  studied  in  an  art 
school.  The  fashion  of  pictorial  advertise- 
ment gives  employment  to  hundreds  of 
young  artists  throughout  our  country, 
and  the  almost  universal  use  of  illustra- 
tion in  our  daily  press  has  opened  a 
by-path  of  art  to  thousands  of  others. 
Then  where,  forty  years  ago,  in  all  our 
broad  land,  there  were  scarcely  any  art 
schools  excepting  those  of  the  National 
Academy  of  Design  in  New  York,  and 
the  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  the  Fine 
Arts  in  Philadelphia,  now  there  is  hardly 
a  city  lacking  its  art  school  and  corps  of 

[107] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

instructors,  while  in  many  a  village  a 
young  artist  could  earn  a  living  by  teach- 
ing the  principles  of  his  art. 

Many  of  these  employments,  I  may  be 
told,  serve  to  deaden  the  ambition  or 
vitiate  the  technical  methods  of  the  men 
who  are  forced  to  have  recourse  to  them 
even  for  a  time,  while  the  service  of  many 
of  those  who  remain  in  them  becomes 
mere  drudgery,  affording  little  of  the  joy 
of  production ;  which  is  rightly  held  to  be 
the  greatest  recompense  of  the  artist's 
life.  To  this  first  objection  I  would  answer 
that,  outside  of  those  who  were  born 
to  fortune,  I  know  few  American  artists 
who  have  not  tarried  for  longer  or  shorter 
periods  in  some  one  of  these  or  kindred 
employments.  In  the  measure  that  they 
have  been  gifted,  their  time  of  probation 
has  been  long  or  short.  The  best  of  them 
have  kept  inviolate  their  higher  aspira- 
tions, and  have  preserved  their  technical 
integrity;  largely  by  doing  the  work  that 

[108] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

their  hand  has  found  to  do  to  the  best  of 
their  ability.  On  the  other  hand,  among 
those  whose  talent  found  either  its  limit 
or  its  just  application  in  any  of  these 
employments  and  who  have  remained 
therein,  there  are  many  who  have  lifted 
the  standard  of  art  applied  to  commerce 
to  a  very  high  level.  I  am  not  certain  but 
that  many  of  us  look  at  the  advertising 
pages  of  our  magazines  with  quite  as 
keen  artistic  enjoyment  as  that  which 
we  experience  when  we  visit  the  average 
exhibition  of  art. 

In  all  forms  of  art  there  are  but  two 
classes,  those  of  works  well  or  ill  done, 
and  in  all  its  manifestations  there  is 
for  the  producer  the  joy  of  doing  the 
work,  and  for  the  product  there  exists, 
somewhere  in  the  world,  appreciation  of 
its  true  value.  It  is  the  joy  of  doing  the 
work  that  counts  with  the  artist,  far  be- 
yond any  other  reward  he  may  receive; 
and  in  this  he  differs  from  the  majority 

[109] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

of  mankind  who  find  in  their  labour  lit- 
tle joy. 

It  was  this  at  least  that  gave  courage  to 
the  youth  that  I  have  continued  to  know 
best,  in  those  early  years  in  New  York, 
when,  ill-prepared  for  the  struggle,  he 
began  to  earn  his  living  by  art. 

There  were  hard  times  a-plenty  in  store 
for  me,  none  possibly  quite  so  hard  as  their 
anticipation  occasionally  menaced,  but 
there  never  was  a  moment  when  I  did 
not  realise  that,  lacking  my  vocation,  I 
might  have  been  keeping  books;  and  I 
turned  with  sustained  contentment  to  the 
meagre  resources  of  my  craft.  This  was  in 
the  winter  of  1870-71,  and  then  there 
existed  few  of  the  many  employments  to 
which  a  young  artist  could  to-day  shape 
his  effort.  The  illustrated  periodicals  all 
had  their  staff  of  artists,  working  in  the 
publishing  offices,  evolving  their  designs 
without  use  of  models — professional  mod- 
els, indeed,  were  hardly  to  be  found 
[no] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

in  the  metropolis  at  that  time.  One  or 
two  of  these  illustrated  papers,  Harper's 
Weekly  notably,  occasionally  accepted  a 
drawing  from  some  one  outside  of  their 
regular  employ,  but  more  often  they 
purchased  what  was  known  as  an  "idea"; 
otherwise  a  sketch,  which  was  then  turned 
over  to  one  of  their  regular  "staff"  to 
be  redrawn  to  serve  in  their  publication. 
Illustrations  for  books  were  given  to  a 
few  men  of  long-established  reputation, 
and  were  of  course  very  much  less  numer- 
ous than  to-day.  There  remained  a  few 
drawings,  chiefly  of  a  mechanical  nature, 
that  were  in  slight  demand  on  the  part  of 
wood-engravers,  to  serve  for  advertising 
purposes.  This  short  list  comprised  the 
field  of  opportunity  which  I  and  a  few 
of  my  contemporaries  found  spread  be- 
fore us. 

Conditions  like  these  necessitated  con- 
siderable agility  of  both  body  and  mind,  a 
quality  which  to-day  we  should  describe 
[ill] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

as  "hustling,"  though  the  term  was  not 
invented  then,  to  secure  a  share  of  this 
scant  harvest  of  opportunity.  I  marvel 
now  how  I  and  some  of  my  comrades 
of  the  time — half  a  dozen  of  whom 
have  survived  the  experience,  as  I  have 
—managed  to  live. 

Personally  I  remember  among  the  early 
work  which  I  found  to  do,  a  drawing 
of  some  form  of  a  dumping  car,  the 
sketch  for  which  was  made  in  an  un- 
heated  cellar  somewhere  in  lower  Broad- 
way, with  the  thermometer  at  a  lower  de- 
gree than  my  benumbed  hands  enjoyed. 
I  wonder  now  how  this  little  drawing  on 
wood,  made  without  knowledge  of  the  use 
of  the  mechanical  draughtsman's  instru- 
ments, could  possibly  have  been  of  use 
to  the  credulous  engraver  who  accepted 
and  paid  for  it.  Other  early  works  were  a 
number  of  theatrical  posters,  which  were 
then  rudely  engraved  on  large  slabs  of 
pine  wood  a  yard  or  more  square.  These 

[112] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

blocks  were,  for  the  larger  posters,  printed 
separately  and  the  sheets  then  joined 
together. 

One  masterpiece  of  this  description  ad- 
vertised the  glories  of  Barnum's  circus. 
This  poster,  where  I  only  collaborated 
with  an  artist  older  than  myself  who 
was  expert  in  drawing  horses,  must  have 
covered  a  space  fifteen  feet  long  when 
spread  upon  the  walls,  and  was  printed 
in  colours,  so  that  we  had  a  large  number 
of  the  blocks  to  design,  and  I  fancy  that 
my  decorative  bent  may  have  been  found 
useful  chiefly  in  the  ornaments  of  the 
chariots  and  in  the  lettering.  Another  and 
quite  independent  work  was  for  that 
classic  melodrama,  the  "Streets  of  New 
York,"  and  represented  as  nearly  as  I  can 
remember  the  City  Hall  burning  to  the 
ground,  surrounded  by  the  old-fashioned 
fire  engines,  with  firemen  galore.  Really 
youth  rushes  in  where  angels  fear  to 
tread,  for  I  not  only  accepted  the  com- 

{113] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

mission  to  do  this  intricate  subject,  but 
without  tremor  I  invented  the  whole  com- 
position and — surely  for  the  reason  that 
the  standard  of  poster  art  was  not  unduly 
high — it  was  found  satisfactory. 

Meanwhile  my  brain  wras  continually 
exercised  to  find  subjects  for  works  of 
better  grade.  I  may  say  that  I  lived,  ate, 
drank,  and  even  slept  with  the  continual 
preoccupation  of  inventing  something, 
seeing  something,  or  hearing  of  something 
that  could  be  translated  into  an  acceptable 
drawing  for  some  of  the  illustrated  papers. 
This  was,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  winter  of 
'70-71,  the  year  of  the  Franco-Prussian 
war.  The  newspapers  were  filled  with 
stories  of  the  heroic  defence  of  Paris, 
and  the  privations  which  its  inhabitants 
were  suffering  from  want  of  food.  Cross- 
ing City  Hall  Park  one  morning  early,  a 
lean  cat  ran  across  the  walk  in  front  of 
me,  and  a  subject,  "The  Last  Cat  in 
Paris,"  instantly  flashed  into  my  mind. 

[114] 


"The  Last  Cat  in  Paris,"  drawing  by  Sol  Eytinge  from  sketch 
by  Will  H.  Low,  1871 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

More  audacity  of  youth !  I  had  never  seen 
Paris  of  course,  and  its  skyline,  the  form 
and  placing  of  its  buildings,  were  totally 
unknown  to  me,  but  I  set  to  work,  and 
concocted  in  some  way  the  view  of  a  city 
seen  from  its  house  tops  by  moonlight. 
Upon  a  chimney  top,  silhouetted  against 
the  full  moon,  stood  a  scrawny  cat  at  bay, 
while  from  every  nook  and  cranny  of 
the  surrounding  roofs  stole  gaunt  figures 
armed  with  guns,  intent  upon  securing 
for  their  larder  "The  Last  Cat  in  Paris." 
It  amuses  me  to-day  to  consider  this 
childish  performance  as  a  mark  of  pre- 
destination for  the  periods  of  my  life 
that  I  have  spent  in  Paris.  In  any  case 
it  marked  the  first  of  the  benefits  that 
I  have  derived  from  that  good  city,  for 
it  was  at  once  accepted  and  published 
by  a  now  forgotten  journal  called  "Hearth 
and  Home."  It  was  noticed  at  the  time, 
and  the  paternal  Mr.  Charles  Parsons, 
who  at  that  time  presided  as  art  editor 

[115] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

of  the  Harper  publications,  gently  chided 
me  for  not  giving  him  the  opportunity 
to  use  it.  He  had  already  neglected  so 
many  like  opportunities,  that  my  youthful 
legs  had  grown  weary  from  climbing  the 
narrow  iron  stairway,  which  in  dizzy, 
spiral  form,  mounted  from  the  courtyard 
of  the  Franklin  Square  building  to  the 
floor  on  which  the  art  department  was 
situated — and  the  aforesaid  legs  had  be- 
come even  more  feeble  and  limp  from 
descending  these  stairs  with  drawings 
which  had  not  been  "found  available." 

One  of  my  friends  of  those  days — who 
now,  from  a  position  which  his  quaint 
and  fertile  fancy  has  made  essentially 
unique,  must  look  back  upon  his  youth- 
ful experiences  with  much  the  same 
feeling  as  I  do,  pardoning  our  affronts, 
smiling  at  our  expedients,  and  marvelling 
at  our  escape — was  wont  to  lay  down  the 
law  governing  acceptance  by  the  Harper 
publications : 

[116] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

"I  go  up,"  said  he,  "present  my  draw- 
ing, and  am  promptly  shown  the  door.  I 
return,  and  this  time  they  send  the  office 
boy  to  show  me  the  way  down  the  stairs 
The  third  time  they  throw  me  down  the 
slippery,  corkscrew  stairway,  and  then 
station  a  husky  porter  at  the  foot  ready 
to  prevent  my  going  up  when  I  present 
myself  the  fourth  time.  Finally  I  get  a 
ladder  and  climb  in  the  front  window. 
The  art  editor  faints,  but  when  he  comes 
to  I  am  still  there,  so  he  buys  the  sketch 
and  lets  some  other  fellow  make  the 
drawing." 

This  may  be  a  somewhat  exaggerated 
picture  of  the  debut  of  a  young  artist  in 
those  days,  but  it  contains  more  than  a 
grain  of  truthful  counsel  even  for  the 
present  generation  in  its  relations  with 
our  periodicals.  "If  at  first  you  don't 
succeed,  try,  try  again." 

By  some  such  process  I,  at  least,  one 
fine  day  bore  away  triumphantly  from 

[117] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  Harper  office  a  square  slab  of  boxwood 
and  the  definite  order  to  make  a  drawing 
on  it  for  the  front  page  of  Harper's 
Weekly.  Months  had  passed  meanwhile 
and  my  original  capital  of  twenty-seven 
dollars  had  received  some  small  additions 
and  I  had  lived  by  my  own  exertions,  how, 
and  how  poorly  some  of  the  time,  I  forget 
and  remember,  for  more  clearly  in  my 
memory  is  fixed  the  joy  of  each  hour 
of  my  chosen  work  and  the  hope  of  its 
continuance. 

This  first  drawing  for  Harper's  Weekly 
gave  me  countenance  in  my  little  circle, 
for  I  had  made  friends  living  much  the 
same  life  and  sharing  the  same  hope. 
One  of  these  friends  enjoyed  the  proud 
position  of  a  permanent  place  on  the 
staff  of  Harper's,  and,  Royal  Academi- 
cian to-day,  busy  with  the  series  of  decora- 
tions for  the  capitol  of  his  native  State, 
after  having  enriched  the  Boston  Public 
Library  with  the  frieze  of  the  "Holy 

[118] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

Grail,"  he  may  have  a  reminiscent  smile 
as  he  recalls  his  term  of  imprisonment 
in  his  first  employ.  Edwin  Abbey  I  had 
known  for  some  years  before  I  met  him 
again  in  these  early  days  in  New  York. 
Mere  children,  busy  with  much  the 
same  activities,  he  in  Philadelphia  and 
I  in  Albany,  we  had  made  acquaintance 
through  the  good  offices  of  my  early 
friend  "Oliver  Optic" — both  of  us  being 
devotees  of  his  literature  and  of  the 
children's  magazine  which  he  edited. 

Much  correspondence  between  Abbey 
and  myself  ensued,  until,  tiring  of  long- 
distance communication,  I  invited  him 
to  make  me  a  visit  at  my  parents'  home 
in  Albany.  This  accepted,  a  return  visit 
to  Philadelphia  on  my  part  was  in  order, 
so  that  when  I  next  met  him  in  New 
York,  though  neither  of  us  was  out  of 
his  teens,  we  were  already  "old  friends." 

When  I  spoke  of  imprisonment  a  mo- 
ment ago,  my  memory  retraced  the 

[119] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

picture  of  the  cellular  construction  of  the 
room  in  which  Abbey,  in  company  with 
Charles  Stanley  Reinhart  and  one  or  two 
others,  worked  in  the  old  Harper  build- 
ing. Partitions,  not  unlike  those  seen  in 
English  chop-houses,  had  been  erected  at 
right  angles  from  the  windows,  each  cell 
enclosing  a  desk  and  a  chair.  I  can  see  my 
friend  in  those  early  days  seated  at  his 
desk,  a  pile  of  English  illustrated  papers, 
Punch,  the  London  Illustrated  News,  or 
the  Cornhill  magazine,  towering  on  either 
hand  above  his  head.  Hither  were 
brought  manuscripts  of  the  most  varied 
character,  and  from  them  these  unfortu- 
nates were  obliged  to  select  subjects. 
Then  from  memory  or  imagination,  cul- 
ling at  times  essential  facts  from  the  store 
of  periodicals  on  their  desks,  they  made 
their  drawings. 

We  did  not  however  consider  them  un- 
fortunate in  those  days;  on  the  contrary 
we  looked  up  to  their  capacity  to  produce 

[120] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

work  that  was  constantly  found  "avail- 
able" for  publication,  as  to  a  higher 
form  of  art.  Reinhart,  indeed,  had  been 
abroad,  a  proud  title  at  that  time,  and 
had  studied  for  a  year  or  so  in  Munich; 
and  even  Abbey  had  enjoyed  some  months 
of  study  in  the  Philadelphia  Academy. 

Upon  the  other  hand,  those  of  us  who 
were  lodged,  two  or  three  together,  in 
lofts,  which  possessing  a  skylight  were 
known  as  studios;  who  could  occasion- 
ally prevail  upon  a  friend  to  pose  for  a 
drawing  in  progress,  or  who,  even  more 
professional,  sometimes  secured  the  ser- 
vices of  one  "Henrietta,"  who  then  en- 
joyed the  distinction  of  being  the  only 
professional  model  in  New  York,  we, 
free  lances,  had  certain  advantages  that 
our  friends  of  steady  employment  and 
the  unfailing  salary  envelope  on  Satur- 
day nights,  rather  envied  us. 

This  picture  of  early  art  life  in  New 
York  may  excite  the  pity  of  the  well- 

[121] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

trained  art  student  of  to-day,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  but  that  it  was  filled  with 
pitfalls  for  the  future,  for  the  untrained 
youths  who  practised  their  immature  art 
under  the  grinding  necessity  of  earning 
their  bread.  But  like  "the  sweet  little 
cherub  who  sits  up  aloft"  for  the  benefit 
of  "poor  Jack,"  the  goddess  of  art  whom 
they  worshipped  has  dealt  kindly  with 
some  of  them. 

Of  Edwin  Abbey,  I  need  hardly  speak. 
Out  from  the  unpromising  ground  of  this 
early  toil,  only  a  few  years  after  blos- 
somed the  fair  flowers  of  the  series  of 
drawings  for  Herrick's  poems,  and  these, 
securing  him  the  liberty  to  live  where  he 
pleased,  took  Abbey  to  England.  There, 
if  his  schooling  was  not  pursued  accord- 
ing to  the  regular  academical  courses,  the 
frequentation  of  the  strongest  painters  re- 
siding in  England  has  stood  him  in  such 
good  stead  that  he  has  in  turn  become  a 
master.  There  is,  in  truth,  no  regular  as 

[122] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

there  is  no  royal  road  to  art,  and  given 
such  exceptional  ability  as  that  of  Abbey, 
no  early  deviation  from  the  beaten  track 
of  art  education  can  lead  the  artist  seri- 
ously astray,  nor  prove  an  insurmount- 
able obstacle  in  his  progressive  path. 
Charles  Stanley  Reinhart  also  broke  away 
from  these  conditions,  and  under  the  geni- 
al influence  of  artistic  environment  in 
Paris,  produced  notable  work,  showing 
little  or  no  lack  of  the  deprivation  of  aca- 
demical training  during  a  career  ended 
too  soon  by  his  early  death. 

A  number  of  us  however,  whose  days 
were  devoted  to  illustration  as  a  bread- 
winner, put  to  profit  the  evenings  by  study- 
ing in  the  night  class  of  the  National 
Academy  of  Design;  in  that  school  which 
in  its  continuous  service  since  1826  has 
been  of  such  vast  benefit  to  succeeding 
generations  of  American  artists.  I  can 
better  speak  in  praise  of  the  Academy 
school,  since  I  was  destined  not  to  profit 

[123] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

by  it  at  the  time  of  which  I  speak.  With 
a  view  to  entering  there  I  had  passed 
some  time  before  leaving  Albany  in  mak- 
ing, under  the  direction  of  Mr.  E.  D. 
Palmer,  a  careful  drawing  from  a  full- 
length  plaster  cast.  As  Mr.  Palmer  had 
an  eye  of  almost  unerring  correctness  I 
fancy  that  this  drawing,  which  he  made 
me  perfect  far  beyond  anything  that  I 
had  done  up  to  that  time,  was  not  with- 
out merit.  It  was  drawn  with  lead-pencil, 
that  being  the  instrument  with  which  I 
was  most  skilful.  This  drawing  was  sub- 
mitted for  entrance  as  a  pupil  of  the 
Academy  to  the  School  Committee  of  the 
time,  but  was  returned  to  me,  with  the 
astonishing  message  that,  while  its  merits 
as  a  drawing  were  quite  sufficient  for  my 
admission,  it  could  not  be  considered, 
as  the  rules  demanded  that  it  should  be 
executed  in  charcoal  or  crayon. 

This  struck  me  then,  as  indeed  it  does 
now,  as  being  a  decision  that  had  no  con- 

[124] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

nection  with  my  ability  to  draw,  and 
consequently  I  scorned  to  make  a  second 
application  for  admission,  but  joined  a 
club  largely  composed  of  German  lithog- 
raphers, who  conducted  a  small  life  school 
in  a  more  or  less  desultory  manner  in  one 
of  the  club  rooms,  where  I  made  my  first 
undirected  effort  at  drawing  from  the 
nude. 

This  trivial  anecdote  gains  point  per- 
haps from  the  fact  that  the  whirligig  of 
time  permitted  me  to  play  the  part  of 
instructor  in  the  schools  of  the  Academy 
for  three  years,  later  on,  and  until  re- 
cently, for  more  than  twice  that  number 
of  years,  I  have  served  as  chairman  of  the 
school  committee  of  the  same  institution 
— which  leads  me  to  express  the  hope  that 
none  of  the  decisions  of  this  latter  time 
were  quite  so  illogical  as  the  one  just  re- 
lated. 

For  that  matter  it  would  undoubtedly 
have  been  better  for  me  had  I  pocketed 

[125] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

my  pride,  even  at  the  expense  of  my  logic, 
and  made  the  endeavour  to  show  that  in 
everything,  except  the  superficial  skill  of 
the  medium  demanded,  I  could  draw 
sufficiently  well  for  admission  to  the 
school,  by  submitting  a  second  drawing, 
executed  in  charcoal  or  crayon.  Had  I 
succeeded  in  entering  there,  I  should  have 
found  myself  in  the  company  of  Carroll 
Beckwith,  F.  S.  Church,  Charles  Melville 
Dewey,  C.  Y.  Turner,  Alden  Weir,  and 
others  of  my  contemporaries  then  and 
now,  some  whom  I  knew  outside  the 
school  and  others  whom  I  was  to  meet  in 
Paris  later  on. 

Outside  of  this  small  circle  of  the  very 
young,  whose  preoccupation  with  the 
question  of  self-support  might  be  thought 
to  have  precluded  a  larger  view  of  art, 
there  was  in  New  York  at  that  time  a  well- 
defined  interest  in  art  which  included 
a  greater  share  of  the  general  public  than 
to-day,  which  was  actively  promoted  by 

[126] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

the  most  influential  of  the  citizens  of  our 
then  provincial  metropolis,  and  from  which 
the  recognised  artists  of  standing  then 
practising  profited  to  a  proportionately 
greater  degree  than  their  later  brothers 
in  art  have  as  yet  known.  To  this  charmed 
inner  circle  we  younger  men  had  little 
access,  but  living  on  its  outskirts  we  could 
know  much  that  passed  therein,  and  form 
our  opinions  of  the  more  active  partici- 
pants in  the  higher  artistic  life  of  New 
York — opinions  which  we  were  not  chary 
in  expressing. 

New  York  was  then  distinctly  pro- 
vincial, but  like  many  provincial  places 
grown  to  sudden  importance,  it  was  also 
self-sufficing,  certain  of  its  judgments, 
and  patriotic  to  a  point  which  jealously 
encouraged  every  home  product  that 
could  add  justification  to  its  nascent  pre- 
tension to  become  the  metropolis  of  the 
Western  World.  The  Civil  War,  while 
impoverishing  certain  sections  of  our 

[127] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

country,  had  brought  wealth  to  many  in 
New  York;  and  some  proportion  of  this, 
large  in  comparison  with  the  numbers 
benefited,  was  spent  in  the  encourage- 
ment of  our  native  art.  New  York  was 
the  only  one  of  our  cities  at  that  time 
where  any  considerable  number  of  artists 
lived,  and  from  long  before  the  war  the 
foundation  and  growth  of  the  National 
Academy  of  Design,  and  its  consequent 
school  of  American  art,  formed  chiefly 
from  its  members,  had  been  a  matter  of 
fostering  pride  to  the  local  civic  interest 
which  then  existed;  however  absent  it 
may  be  in  the  Greater  New  York  we 
know  to-day. 

The  building  at  51  West  Tenth  Street, 
that  had  been  erected  about  1857  for 
the  special  accommodation  of  our  local 
artists,  was  still  the  stronghold  of  the 
flourishing  Hudson  River  School,  which 
we  rather  decry  to-day,  though  the  fluctu- 
ations of  the  picture  market  may  well 

[128] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

bring  its  productions  into  favour  again — 
the  vagaries  of  the  picture  market,  how- 
ever, being  a  question  quite  outside  of 
art  need  not  be  considered  here.  The 
decline  of  this  early  American  school 
was  already  imminent  at  the  time  of 
which  I  write,  but  there  remained  enough 
of  its  prestige  to  make  of  the  Saturday 
afternoon  receptions,  held  in  the  Studio 
Building,  one  of  the  chief  social  events  of 
the  town.  Long  lines  of  carriages,  which 
had  brought  visitors  to  the  studios, 
stretched  the  length  of  the  street,  and 
were  lined  up  some  distance  upon  the 
adjacent  Fifth  Avenue.  Within  the  build- 
ing a  great  throng  of  people  elbowed  each 
other,  pressing  around  the  easels  where 
were  to  be  seen  the  latest  works  of  the 
painters  who  occupied  these  studios. 
Charming  gentlemen  they  were  too,  ac- 
customed to  the  best  society  that  New 
York  possessed,  travelled  and  cultured; 
many  of  them  having  brought  back  from 

[129] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

long  residence  abroad  manners  of  Old- 
World  courtesy,  which  our  old-fashioned 
New  York  appreciated  and  to  some  extent 
shared. 

I  remember  years  afterward,  when  some 
of  us  young  iconoclasts  of  the  Society 
of  American  Artists  had  overcome  the 
fault  of  youth  sufficiently  to  become  mem- 
bers of  the  National  Academy  of  Design, 
that  the  late  Parke  Godwin  was  present 
at  a  dinner  given  in  the  galleries  of  the 
Academy  at  the  opening  of  the  annual 
exhibition.  Mr.  Godwin  made  a  most  de- 
lightful speech,  filled  with  reminiscences 
of  the  earlier  days  of  the  Academy,  and 
of  his  old  friends  who  were  then  young. 
He  spoke  of  Cole,  Morse,  Kensett, 
Church,  Gifford,  and  McEntee;  he  turned 
to  Daniel  Huntington,  who  was  present, 
as  was  Worthington  Whittredge,  whose 
death  we  were  called  to  mourn  so  re- 
cently, and  included  them  all  in  a  retro- 
spective survey  of  their  lives  and  aspira- 

[130] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

tions.  Then  he  stopped  for  an  appreciable 
moment,  shook  his  leonine  mane  of  sil- 
vered hair,  and  almost  fiercely  concluded 
his  speech: 

"I  am  told  that  some  of  you  younger 
men  that  I  see  about  me  paint  better  than 
these  old  friends  of  mine  of  whom  I  have 
spoken.  Perhaps  this  is  so,  I  do  not  know 
enough  about  painting,  about  present- 
day  painting,  to  know;  but  there  is  one 
thing  of  which  I  am  certain:  you  may  be 
better  painters,  you  cannot  be  better  men 
than  these  gallant  gentlemen  who  were 
the  artists  of  my  day."  The  applause 
which  greeted  him  as  he  sat  down  carries 
a  lesson  which  we  all  may  heed;  for  if 
the  art  school  is  justifiably  occupied  with 
its  special  technical  training,  the  harder 
school  of  life  places  the  scholar  only  in 
the  grade  for  which  his  mental  and  moral 
accomplishments  fit  him. 

But  those  were  brave  days  in  the  old 
Tenth  Street  Studio  Building  as  we  youth- 

[131  ] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ful  aspirants  were  permitted  to  mingle 
with  the  throng,  to  note  their  respectful 
attitude  toward  art,  and  the  deference 
paid  to  its  practitioners.  Kindly  men 
also  were  these  painters,  and  many  a  word 
of  encouragement  and  advice  was  to  be 
had  from  them  as  we  youngsters  were 
made  welcome.  Then  again  in  the  hard 
struggle  for  life  that  some  of  us  knew, 
whispers  of  the  prices  paid  for  their  pict- 
ures, fabulous  as  they  seemed,  served  to 
give  us  hope  that  some  day  we  might  hope 
to  share  in  the  golden  flood.  No  doubt 
in  many  cases  the  money,  which  had  come 
easily  to  the  purchasers  of  these  works,was 
not  wisely  expended.  In  the  hard  times 
that  were  soon  to  come,  in  the  changing 
fashion  which  importation  of  foreign  works 
of  art  was  to  create,  many  of  these  pict- 
ures when  brought  to  the  auction  block 
failed  to  maintain  their  original  prices. 
There  had  been  a  grain  of  folly  in  the  patri- 
otic desire  to  encourage  our  native  artists. 

[132] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

Not  long  ago  one  of  our  older  artists 
told  me  of  an  incident  that  occurred  in 
these  days.  One  of  our  painters,  a  man 
now  quite  forgotten  and  at  the  time  not 
one  whose  work  ranked  high,  had  received 
a  commission  to  paint  a  picture  for  some 
one  who  was  more  generous  than  dis- 
criminating. When  the  painting  was  fin- 
ished, the  would-be  patron  of  art  found  it 
to  his  liking,  but  on  inquiring  for  the 
first  time  its  price,  he  was  surprised  to 
learn  that  the  painter  demanded  ten 
thousand  dollars.  To  his  mild  expostula- 
tion that  he  had  hardly  expected  to  pay 
so  much  for  a  work  which  in  dimensions 
was  not  important,  the  artist  stood  firm. 
The  man  of  business,  realising  that,  as  no 
price  had  been  agreed  upon,  he  was  in 
some  measure  bound  to  accede  to  the  ex- 
cessive demand,  finally  proposed  that  the 
question  be  left  to  the  arbitration  of  three 
artists,  common  friends  of  theirs.  This 
was  agreed;  but  on  meeting  for  the  pur- 

[133] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

pose  of  settling  this  delicate  question, 
the  painter  of  the  picture  in  dispute  was 
able  to  compare  the  prices  paid  for  so 
many  works  by  other  men,  of  whom  he 
was  at  least  socially  the  equal,  living  in 
the  same  studio  building  and  sharing 
their  life,  that  the  arbitrators  were  at 
last  forced  to  decide  that  seven  thousand 
five  hundred  dollars  must  be  paid,  "for 
a  picture,"  said  my  informant,  "which 
to-day  would  not  be  worth  more  than 
three  or  four  hundred  dollars." 
About  this  time  also  was  produced  Albert 
Bierstadt's  great  canvas,  the  "Rocky 
Mountains,"  and  we  were  told  that  the 
painter  received  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  for  his  recompense.  To-day,  this 
picture  has  found  a  permanent  place  in 
the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  in  New 
York.  It  is  the  present  pleasure  of  our 
public  and  many  of  our  painters  to  decry 
the  work  of  Bierstadt.  But  to  stand  before 
this  picture  and  note  its  accurate  draw- 

[134] 


8, 
2 

I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

ing,  the  various  knowledge  of  form  that 
it  displays,  the  manner  in  which  the  whole 
vast  panorama  is  kept  together,  and  the 
happy  disposition  of  the  various  objects 
scattered  through  its  foreground,  one 
who  knows  something  of  the  difficulties 
in  making  of  a  large  canvas  a  harmonious 
and  sustained  composition,  would  be  ill- 
inspired  to  deny  the  ability  which  has 
accomplished  this  work. 

Fashion  in  art  is  a  curious  thing.  Long 
years  ago  a  painter  so  gifted  as  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  was  prompted  on  his  tour 
through  Italy  to  note  the  works  of  the 
Caracci  and  the  Bolognese  School  and  to 
determine  that  they  were  nearly  of  the 
rank  of  his  demigods  of  painting,  Raphael 
and  Michelangelo.  In  his  "Discourses" 
on  his  return  to  England  he  wrote  pages  in 
their  praise,  which  we  may  read  to-day. 
Yet  in  these  pages  we  shall  not  find  the 
names  of  Perugino,  Botticelli,  Pinturic- 
chio,  or  Ghirlandajo;  painters  whose  art 

[135] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

we  delight  to  honour  to-day  and  whose 
works  blossomed  on  the  walls  of  Italy 
when  this  great  artist  and  earnest  student 
of  painting  lingered  over  the  now  dis- 
credited art  of  the  Eclectic  School.  Who 
shall  say  that  when  our  present  landscape 
school  settles  down  to  the  realisation  that 
earth  has  its  anatomy,  that  a  tree  has  its 
definite  character  of  form,  that  the  "  planes 
that  lie  flat,  and  those  which  are  vertical" 
are  the  two  great  qualities  of  a  landscape, 
as  Jean  Fra^ois  Millet  once  told  to  my 
proper  ears — who  shall  say  that  when  our 
landscape  painters  draw  as  Rousseau, 
Corot,  and  Millet  drew,  as  Harpignies 
draws  to-day,  but  that  our  painters  of  an 
earlier  time,  men  who  at  least  loved  the 
shapes  of  things,  as  did  Durand,  Ken- 
sett,  Church,  and  Bierstadt,  may  enjoy  a 
recrudescence  of  esteem  for  their  notable 
— if  somewhat  topographical — work  ? 

But  with  the  curiosity  and  with  some  of 
the  independence  of  youth,   it  was  not 

[136] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

alone  to  the  studios  of  the  more  popular 
and  most  lauded  painters  of  the  time 
that  I  bent  my  steps;  in  the  same  building 
were  three  or  four  studios  where  I  found 
works  which  appealed  to  me  as  having 
other  and  greater  qualities  than  I  found 
elsewhere. 

It  must  be  remembered  what  a  very 
ignorant  young  pilgrim  of  art  I  was  in 
those  days,  how  little  I  had  seen  and  how 
very  much  less  I  could  know  with  such 
certainty  as  experience  since  then  may 
have  endowed  me.  Therefore  I  take  lit- 
tle credit  to  myself  for  my  early  predilec- 
tion for  the  works  of  John  La  Farge, 
Winslow  Homer,  and  Homer  Martin, 
three  of  the  men  whose  work  appeared  to 
me  to  carry  a  new  message  of  art.  At  the 
most  it  could  only  have  been  a  groping, 
intuitive  sense  of  what  these  men  then 
saw  clearly,  and  it  was  only  the  glimmer 
of  a  light  to  which  further  study  was  to 
open  my  eyes,  but  which  for  the  work  of 

[137] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

these  men  has  never  flickered  or  grown 
faint  since  those  days.  Another  whose 
work  had  excited  my  youthful  enthusiasm 
was  George  Inness,  whom  at  that  time  I 
did  not  meet. 

Twelve  years  later  I  was  privileged  to 
pass  a  few  months  in  a  pleasant  house  on 
the  Hudson  where  Inness  was  of  the  com- 
pany, and  even  then,  in  1883,  he  was  still 
far  from  the  recognition  which  he  finally 
attained  and  which  has  grown  in  volume 
since  his  death. 

In  these  earlier  days  he  was  a  much- 
disputed  artist,  the  chief  bone  of  conten- 
tion being,  as  I  remember,  his  tendency 
to  paint  extremely  low-toned  landscape. 
Those  who  disputed  the  relative  merits  of 
light  or  dark  painting  took  little  account 
of  the  disposition  of  the  erratic  painter, 
who  later  in  life  abandoned  his  earlier 
theories,  and  painted  each  subject  in  the 
tone  which  suited  the  mood  of  the  moment 
or  was  dictated  by  the  character  of  the 

[138] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

theme.  But  at  that  time  Inness  was  said 
to  paint  upon  a  canvas  grounded  with 
Indian  red.  Nicolas  Poussin  two  hundred 
years  before  had  made  the  same  mistake, 
with  the  result  that  many  of  his  works 
to-day  are  almost  indistinguishable,  and 
some  of  Inness's  pictures  of  the  period 
of  which  I  speak  are  in  the  same  plight. 
The  strong,  darkly  coloured  ground  has 
eaten  its  way  to  the  surface,  and  the  facti- 
tious "tone"  that  anticipated  the  kindly 
hand  of  time,  which  is  best  left  to  do  its 
own  work  in  its  own  way,  has  destroyed 
many  of  his  earlier  works. 
The  wordy  war  which  we  waged  upon 
this  or  kindred  and  trivial  technical  sub- 
jects best  paints  the  restricted  and  pro- 
vincial attitude  not  only  of  the  younger 
artists  of  the  time,  but  of  many  of  our 
elders  who  were  equally  parochial  in  their 
views.  A  number  of  years  before  there 
had  been  a  temporary  popularity  accorded 
to  the  works  of  the  Diisseldorf  painters, 

[139] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

which  were  almost  the  first  foreign  pict- 
ures brought  to  our  country.  This  had 
menaced  the  prosperity  of  our  native 
school,  and  there  had  grown  up  in  conse- 
quence a  prejudice  against  any  form  of 
foreign  art.  Some  of  us  were  ill-received 
therefore  when  rare  examples  of  Rous- 
seau and  Corot  began  to  attract  our  at- 
tention, and  our  elder  mentors  solemnly 
warned  us  against  losing  our  native  origi- 
nality by  contamination  with  foreign  in- 
fluences. "  Corot,"  snorted  one  of  these,  a 
now  forgotten  painter,  "Corot!  Give  me  a 
canvas,  some  cigar  ashes,  and  a  dirty  rag, 
and  I  will  paint  you  the  best  Corot  you 


ever  saw." 


Nevertheless  the  great  French  painter 
impressed  me  by  an  atmospheric  quality, 
a  grace  of  line  and  mass,  and  a  sense  of 
style  which  I  did  not  always  find  in  our 
native  productions.  Here  I  was  fortunate 
in  having  Homer  Martin  to  serve  as  a 
court  of  appeal,  to  justify  my  timid  admi- 

[140] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

ration  for  Corot's  art.  Martin  I  had  known 
from  my  earlier  years  in  Albany,  as  he  fre- 
quently passed  through  on  his  way  to  or 
from  the  Adirondacks,  where  he  often 
passed  his  summers.  I  ran  across  him 
early  in  my  sojourn  in  New  York  at  a 
French  restaurant.  I  remember  the  some- 
what grudging  manner  in  which  he  com- 
plied with  my  request  to  be  allowed  to 
sit  at  his  table,  a  manner  which  thawed 
perceptibly  under  my  enthusiasm  and 
eager  questioning,  so  that  on  quitting 
me  he  graciously  allowed  in  so  many 
words  that  I  was  not  perhaps  as  much  of 
a  fool  as  some  of  the  influences  to  which 
I  confessed  might  have  made  me.  I  saw 
much  of  him  thereafter  and  through  him 
I  came  to  know  some  of  the  few  men  who 
were  in  sympathy  with  his  aims,  all  of 
which  was  a  precious  influence  to  one 
like  me  sailing  without  rudder  or  com- 
pass, though  my  course  was  already  set 
to  attain,  by  what  means  I  knew  not,  to 

[141] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  larger  opportunities  of  art — to  the  fair 
land  of  France. 

In  all  I  passed  two  years  in  New  York, 
working  only  in  black  and  white,  save 
one  poor  little  picture  painted  in  a  scant 
fortnight,  impelled  half  by  emulation  of 
a  friend  who  was  preparing  a  picture  for 
exhibition  at  the  spring  Academy.  It  has 
come  back  to  me,  through  the  death  of 
my  mother,  and  curiously  enough  there 
are  bits  of  drapery  in  it  that  I  could  not 
paint  much  better  to-day;  and  though, 
as  a  whole,  it  denotes  the  inexperience  of 
the  painter,  it  was  accepted  and  hung  in 
the' Academy  Exhibition  of  1872. 

I  managed  to  maintain  a  precarious  foot- 
ing in  the  ranks  of  illustration  for  these 
two  years  of  my  novitiate,  and,  to  continue 
the  consideration  of  the  financial  aspect  of 
art,  in  the  second  of  these  years  I  earned 
about  fifteen  hundred  dollars.  It  was 
more  than  a  youth  of  nineteen  would 
have  been  likely  to  earn  in  any  commer- 

[142] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

cial  employ,  and  meanwhile,  erratic  and 
insufficient  as  were  the  influences  to  which 
I  was  subjected,  I  was  learning  each  day 
that  the  life  of  the  artist  afforded  oppor- 
tunities for  mental  growth  in  every  direc- 
tion; I  was  learning  that  in  the  joy  of  the 
work  was  the  recompense  thereof,  and, 
above  all,  I  was  learning  how  very  little 
I  knew. 

In  this  spirit  I  was  fortunate  when  I 
made  a  new  friend  in  Olin  L.  Warner, 
the  sculptor,  whose  death  by  accident  in 
1896  cut  short  the  career  of  one  who 
counted  in  our  art.  Warner  had  just  re- 
turned from  several  years'  study  in  Paris, 
and  eagerly  I  listened  to  all  that  he  had 
to  tell.  He  had  been  the  intimate  of  a 
group  of  young  sculptors,  who  a  year  later 
received  me  on  terms  which  showed  their 
appreciation  of  their  former  comrade,  by 
whose  introduction  I  was  permitted,  in 
some  sort,  to  take  his  place. 

One  of  Warner's  admonitions  was  of 

[143] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

great  value  to  me  when  my  turn  came  to 
go  to  Paris.  He  advised  me  to  adopt  the 
Spartan  attitude  of  fleeing  the  society  of 
my  compatriots  while  abroad;  to  profit, 
not  only  by  the  means  of  art  education, 
which  France  puts  as  generously  at  the 
disposition  of  aliens  as  of  her  proper  chil- 
dren, but  to  learn  the  underlying  principles 
which  have  made  the  country  so  great  in 
art;  endeavouring  to  acquire  as  much  as 
possible  the  French  point  of  view,  to 
know  not  only  the  men  of  to-day  but  the 
whole  long  line  of  artists  who  since  the 
time  of  Francis  the  First  have  laboured 
to  that  end.  He  gave  me  the  first  clear 
insight  into  a  larger  comprehension  of 
the  place  that  art  has  taken  in  the  past, 
which  is  sustained  more  than  elsewhere  in 
the  world  in  France  to-day,  and  of  the 
possibilities  of  the  future,  which  perhaps 
we  are  called  to  inherit  in  large  part. 

His  enthusiasm  was  contagious,  and  to 
one  occupied  with  the  not  too  elevating 

[144] 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 

production  of  popular  drawings,  evolved 
from  a  desire  to  please  a  popular  periodi- 
cal, most  salutary.  Under  his  influence 
my  ambitions  grew,  and  then  came  a 
windfall,  and  I  found  that  I  could  go  to 
Paris. 


[145] 


IV 

EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD 
WORLD 

To  wake  up  in  Paris,  as  the  realisation 
of  a  dream  that  has  lasted  for  years,  is  a 
sensation  destined  to  make  enduring  im- 
pression. I  was  not  yet  twenty;  I  was 
quite  alone;  I  did  not  speak  a  word  of 
French;  I  enjoyed  the  same  lack  of  a 
sense  of  locality  that  still  enables  me  to 
lose  myself  promptly  in  any  strange  city; 
— but  I  was  in  Paris  and  the  world  was 
before  me. 

Chance  had  taken  me  to  a  hotel  near 
the  Madeleine,  and  I  went  down  the  Rue 
Royale,  on  the  brilliant  Sunday  morning 
following  the  night  of  my  arrival,  and 
came  out  upon  the  Place  de  la  Concorde. 
Stretching  away  in  the  distance  was  a 

[146] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

long  avenue,  which  by  the  monumental 
arch  at  its  summit  I  recognised  as  that 
of  the  Champs  Elysees.  This  I  followed 
for  some  little  distance,  when  I  observed 
a  long  line  of  people,  whose  steps  seemed 
bent  to  enter  a  large  building  on  the  left 
of  the  avenue.  Why  I  should  have  fallen 
in  and  followed  with  this  procession  is  a 
question  that  still  puzzles  me,  but  follow 
it  I  did.  I  passed  under  a  great  portal, 
and  suddenly  found  myself  in  what  it  took 
me  some  little  time  to  understand  was  the 
annual  exhibition  of  art — the  Paris  Salon. 
It  was  in  the  old  Palace  of  Industry, 
which  was  built  for  the  French  Universal 
Exposition  of  1855  and  vanished  before 
that  of  1900,  to  be  replaced  by  the  present 
building;  one  vastly  more  ornate  and 
considerably  less  adapted  for  the  purposes 
of  an  exhibition  of  art.  It  was  a  free  day, 
and  not  a  little  of  the  wonder  that  over- 
came me  was  to  see  the  vast  throng  of 
visitors  intent  and  apparently  interested 

[1471 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

in  art.  They  gathered  around  the  more 
popular  works  exhibited  and,  with  an 
abundance  of  gesture,  which  then  struck 
me  strangely,  approved  or  criticised  with 
animation  in  a  language  which  then  ap- 
peared to  me  even  stranger  still.  Lost 
in  the  vast  throng,  I  wandered  from 
room  to  room  or  lingered  in  the  garden 
below,  under  the  great  roof  of  glass, 
where  was  gathered  more  statuary  than 
I  could  have  believed  to  exist  in  the 
world.  Forgetful  of  food,  I  stayed  there 
the  livelong  day,  and  came  out  near 
nightfall,  my  brain  fairly  whirling  with 
what  I  had  seen.  Perhaps  it  is  for  that 
reason  that  my  recollection  of  any  special 
work,  seen  that  day  for  the  first  time, 
remains  confused  and  blended  in  a  maze 
of  colour  and  form. 

The  one  artist  whose  work  I  had  not 
known  before,  who  began  that  day  to 
excite  an  admiration  that  has  grown  with 
my  years,  was  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  It 

[148] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

was  not  that  I  could  at  once  appreciate 
the  essentially  decorative  character  of  his 
work;  on  the  contrary  it  rather  troubled 
me,  but  with  a  strange  fascination  that 
led  me  to  seek  to  know  more  of  an  artist 
who  at  that  time  had  hardly  acquired 
recognition  in  his  own  country.  I  real- 
ise now  that  my  intuitive  feeling  for  dec- 
oration was  the  reason  for  which,  in  the 
following  months  as  Paris  became  more 
familiar  to  me,  I  was  led  to  frequent 
the  gallery  of  Durand-Ruel,  in  the  rue 
Lafitte,  where  works  of  his  could  occa- 
sionally be  seen,  together  with  those  of 
many  men,  Millet  among  the  number, 
who  then  also  lacked  the  world-wide  re- 
nown that  they  have  since  attained. 
The  young  American  who  goes  to  Paris 
to  study  art  to-day  finds  his  way  made 
easy.  Too  easy  in  a  sense,  for  the  great 
number  of  his  compatriots  who  are  gath- 
ered there  make  of  his  translation  to  a 
different  land,  a  different  language,  and  a 
F1491 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

different  standard  of  art,  a  mere  change 
of  scene  and  a  prolongation  of  almost 
the  same  influences  that  he  has  known 
at  home.  He  will  find  a  students'  club 
composed  of  his  compatriots,  who  con- 
sort to  schools  where  the  majority  of  the 
pupils  are  Americans.  He  will  find  it  easy 
to  live  in  this  environment,  and  pass  a 
longer  or  shorter  period  without  really 
coming  into  contact  with  the  people  of 
the  country,  without  acquiring  their  lan- 
guage, and,  what  is  vastly  more  impor- 
tant, without  realising  that  it  is  not  the 
France  of  to-day  alone  for  which  he  has 
journeyed  so  far. 

The  France  of  to-day  shares  with  the 
world  what  it  has  taken  centuries  of 
effort  in  art  to  establish.  To  take  only 
its  last  offering;  to  accept  its  last  Salon 
success,  which  like  all  contemporary 
movements  may  be  only  a  passing  phase, 
and  to  endeavour  to  establish  on  this 
basis  one's  future  effort,  is  to  embark 

[150] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

upon  an  uncharted  sea,  with  only  a  day's 
provisions  on  board.  Among  modern 
French  painters,  for  instance,  Besnard 
ranks  with  the  first.  His  art  is  audacious; 
it  seeks  the  unknown;  it  plays  easily  with 
different  technical  qualities;  to-day  it  is 
an  effort  in  one  direction,  to-morrow  in 
another;  but  it  is  always  alluring  and  it 
never  fails  to  elicit  attention  in  the  Salon. 
But  how  few  of  the  younger  men  who 
look  for  his  work  each  year,  with  an 
unconscious  desire  to  imitate  it  the  next, 
when  perhaps  the  erratic  master  is  pro- 
ducing something  quite  different,  realise 
that  Besnard  is  the  pupil  of  the  rather 
discredited  Bouguereau!  Time  was  when 
Besnard's  work  could  hardly  be  distin- 
guished from  that  of  his  master,  who, 
however  much  the  changing  fashion  may 
have  temporarily  discredited  his  art,  re- 
mains one  of  the  most  accomplished 
draughtsmen  and  thorough  technicians  of 
the  French  school.  It  was  the  solid  foun- 

[151] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

dation  that  Besnard  acquired  under  the 
direction  of  Bouguereau,  who  in  turn 
had  inherited  in  an  ascending  line  the 
same  thorough  technical  education,  that 
enables  him  to-day  to  juggle  with  his 
various  experiments,  to  be  audacious,  to 
be  fairly  disquieting;  but  never  to  lose 
his  footing  on  the  solid  rock  of  technical 
proficiency,  based  upon  the  underlying 
strata  of  remote  geological  periods  of 
French  art  endeavour. 

It  was  only  a  few  years  ago  that  a  like 
universal  acceptance  of  one  phase  of 
Whistler's  work  steeped  much  of  the 
effort  of  our  younger  men  in  a  cheerless 
and  monotonous  gloom.  I  have  seen  a 
class  of  students  in  a  life  school  work- 
ing from  a  model  whose  glowing  flesh 
was  relieved  from  a  dark  background  in 
tones  that  it  would  baffle  their  pigments 
to  equal  in  brilliancy.  But  when  I  turned 
to  the  studies,  I  saw  a  murky  array  of 
sadly  faded  damsels,  who  appeared  to  be 

[152] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

sitting  disconsolate  in  cellars  from  which 
nearly  every  ray  of  light  had  been  ex- 
cluded. On  my  demanding  the  reason 
for  this  obvious  departure  from  the  self- 
evident  truth — which  daylight,  the  pal- 
pitating quality  of  flesh,  and  the  sombre 
background  established — I  was  told  that 
as  the  model  was  placed  some  distance 
from  the  window  it  followed  naturally 
that  the  flesh  must  be  lower  in  tone  than 
it  would  be  if  nearer  the  source  of  light, 
and  that  it  was  necessary  to  take  this 
into  account,  as  otherwise  there  would  be 
no  reserve  force  on  the  palette,  if  the 
painter  was  called  upon  to  depict  a 
figure  nearer  the  window.  This  method 
of  crossing  a  bridge  before  arriving  at 
it  was,  I  was  informed,  that  which 
Whistler  advocated  in  his  latest  teach- 
ing. If  such  was  the  case,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  master,  who  as  we 
know  was  endowed  with  a  rare  sense  of 
humour,  had  evolved  this  theory  when 

[153] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

given  up  to  the  gentle  art  of  making  a 
new  generation  see  that  white  was  black. 
Examples  like  this  could  be  multiplied, 
and  I  do  not  for  a  moment  wish  to 
claim  that  my  generation  was  a  whit  wiser 
than  that  which  has  followed,  as  we, 
sheep-like,  were  led  by  the  shepherds 
most  in  vogue  in  our  time.  But  the  youths 
who  went  to  Paris  thirty  years  ago  were 
far  less  advanced  in  their  training  than 
those  who  go  thither  to-day.  We  were 
not  prepared  by  long  study  in  art  schools, 
such  as  now  exist  here,  to  begin  at  so 
advanced  a  point  our  transplanted  en- 
deavour as  do  the  students  of  the  present 
time.  Consequently  as  a  rule  we  were 
obliged  to  stay  much  longer,  and  to  begin 
very  much  as  the  young  Frenchman 
began,  in  the  lower  grades  of  the  art 
school.  Then  there  had  been  no  such 
influx  of  our  compatriot  students  in  the 
schools  of  Paris  as  there  is  to-day;  and 
working  side  by  side  with  our  French 

[154] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

comrades,  we  unconsciously  imbibed  from 
the  same  source  as  they  a  greater  respect 
for  tradition,  a  deeper  insight  into  the 
remote  causes  which  little  by  little,  effort 
following  effort,  have  woven  the  can- 
vas upon  which  French  art  has  painted 
its  accomplishments,  in  undying  colours, 
for  the  past  four  centuries. 

Again — and  here  I  speak  under  correc- 
tion, knowing  how  prone  maturity  is  to 
extol  the  past  at  the  expense  of  the  pres- 
ent— I  doubt  if  for  purposes  of  instruction 
Paris  is  as  well  equipped  to-day  as  it  was 
thirty  years  ago.  The  men  then  at  the 
head  of  the  schools  were  thoroughly  aca- 
demic. Their  names  alone  recall  to  us  a 
generation  of  painters  whose  personal  pro- 
duction was  perhaps  devoid  of  any  special 
or  above  all  novel  quality,  but  who  were 
versed  in  the  principles  that  have  kept  art 
logical  and  sane  from  the  first.  Accuracy 
of  form  and  construction,  veracity  of  col- 
our and  values,  insistence  upon  qualities  of 

[155] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

style,  and  adherence  to  established  tradi- 
tions are  all  landmarks  that  the  youthful 
mariner  finds  of  service  when  leaving 
port.  Once  out  at  sea,  if  he  carries  enough 
ballast,  he  may  steer  his  course  alone; 
but,  as  a  pilot  for  clearing  the  harbour, 
he  could  in  my  time  choose  between  Ge- 
rome,  Cabanel,  Boulanger,  Bouguereau, 
Lefebvre,  or  Bonnat;  experienced  mariners 
all.  If  he  were  inclined  to  freight  a  vent- 
ure that  dared  to  sail  a  less  established 
course,  he  could  enlist  Carolus  Duran  as 
his  pilot.  Now  there  has  been  a  wave  of 
discontent  in  Paris;  in  art  it  would  seem 
as  though  the  French  have  become  rev- 
olutionary in  the  exact  ratio  that  they 
have  become  conservative  in  politics. 
They  have  maintained  a  republic  since 
1870,  but  in  art  they  have  had  many  rev- 
olutions since  that  time. 

Consequently,  if  we  look  to-day  at  the 
current  art  instruction  of  Paris  we  find 
it  addicted  to  the  worship  of  new  gods, 

[156] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

some  of  quite  recent  invention  and  un- 
tried potency,  and  the  student  who  seeks 
benefit  there  may  hear  but  half-hearted 
advocacy  of  these  long-accepted  princi- 
ples of  art  from  men  who  themselves 
are  groping  in  the  research  of  new 
qualities;  that  may  in  the  end  prevail 
and  constitute  a  definite  advance,  but 
which  are  for  the  moment  elusive  and 
uncertain.  I  know  for  instance,  of  a 
young  French  friend,  the  pupil  of  an 
artist,  who  is  a  rare  survival  from  these 
earlier  influences.  The  master  was  keep- 
ing the  pupil  hard  at  work  drawing, 
when  one  day  the  pupil  went  to  visit 
the  studio  of  one  who  had  received  and 
welcomed  these  newer  tenets  of  the  last 
word,  the  up-to-date  methods  of  art. 
"You  tell  me  you  are  drawing,"  cried 
this  scandalised  moderniste.  "Pray,  why 
do  you  do  that?  Don't  you  know  we 
draw  no  longer." 
But  in  my  time  we  drew — or  at  least 

[157] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

we  drew  as  well  as  we  were  able — and  the 
maxim  of  Ingres  that  "drawing  is  the 
probity  of  art"  was  served  to  us  as  our 
daily  fare.  Conditions  here  have  changed, 
it  is  true,  quite  as  much  as  in  Paris,  if 
indeed  the  superficial  aspects  of  art 
education  there  have  not  been  directly 
affected  by  the  numerical  strength,  the 
imitative  skill,  and  the  desire  for  imme- 
diate results  of  the  typical  American 
student.  We  go  there  now  knowing  ex- 
actly what  we  want,  foreseeing  the  use 
we  can  make  of  it,  having  but  little  time 
in  which  to  acquire  it,  and  less  patience 
with  what  we  deem  the  roundabout  and 
dilatory  methods  which  still  prevail  in 
some  of  the  government  schools — the 
Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts,  for  instance. 

Paris  has  every  form  of  art  for  sale, 
as  well  as  that  which  the  government 
bestows  gratuitously  upon  all  who  are 
worthy,  of  every  nationality.  Therefore 
the  youth  with  fixed  ideas  and  what  I 

[158] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

may  call  ready-for-use  standards  can  find 
in  Paris  the  exact  form  of  instruction 
that  he  desires,  in  schools  which  are 
established  upon  a  business  basis,  in 
which  the  pupil  for  a  fixed  and  moderate 
sum  may  receive  the  counsels  of  perhaps 
the  artist  most  in  vogue  for  the  moment; 
the  one  man,  his  compatriots  of  longer 
residence  in  Paris  may  assure  him,  who 
surely  possesses  the  secret  of  modern  art; 
who,  if  he  has  not  disclosed  it  to  a  wait- 
ing world  at  the  last  Salon,  will  surely  do 
so  at  the  next,  or  the  next  after — if  some 
other  fellow  does  not  get  ahead  of  him. 
It  was  in  a  much  more  submissive  spirit 
that  the  American  art  student  went  to 
France  thirty  years  ago.  We  knew  very 
much  less  technically  than  our  men 
who  go  there  now,  and  we  were  too 
few  to  dictate  the  terms  on  which  we 
would  accept  the  benefits  we  sought. 
We  were  told  that  art  is  long  and  we 
believed  it — as  many  of  us  have  indeed 

[159] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

found  it  to  be,  as  the  student  of  to-day 
will  discover  it  to  be  in  time,  and  as 
certain  cheery  old  men  of  ninety  or  there- 
abouts, who  are  still  working  in  France, 
know  it  to  be  for  a  certainty. 

We  all  went  there  for  a  year.  We  were 
as  certain  before  starting  from  home  as 
were  our  anxious  parents  that  in  that 
time  we  could  learn  everything  that  was 
to  be  learned  without  danger  to  our 
precious  originality,  and  the  most  of  us 
stayed  at  least  five  years,  while  some  of 
the  men  of  my  student  days  have  never 
come  back.  Some  of  us  who  did,  and 
who  have  practised  our  art  here  ever  since, 
undoubtedly  established  the  standard  of 
instruction  in  our  art  schools;  which  has 
since  been  maintained  in  a  progressive 
spirit  by  succeeding  home-comers,  even 
as  the  standard  of  our  exhibitions  has 
grown  from  the  same  source. 

The  student  we  send  from  our  shores 

to-day     for     post-graduate     instruction 

f  1601 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

abroad  is  perhaps  more  subject  to  the 
varied  and  changing  phases  of  modern 
art  than  is  his  foreign  brother;  who 
knows  indeed  what  is  going  on  near 
at  home  and  may  be  in  the  fore-front 
of  the  new  movement,  but  is  quite  igno- 
rant of  the  last  word  of  art  across  the 
channel  or  over  the  frontier  beyond  Bel- 
fort.  There  is  to-day  in  Europe  a  vast 
unrest,  a  forgetfulness  of  the  route  by 
which  art  travelled  up  to  the  point 
where  it  met  these  modern  conditions, 
and  much  dispute  as  to  its  future  course. 
As  always  at  such  times  there  are  a  few 
quiet  persons,  apparently  oblivious  to  the 
hubbub  raised  about  them,  who  go  on 
producing  modest  masterpieces,  cast  in 
quite  the  old-fashioned  mould,  as  they 
may  have  done  for  years.  Others  begin 
their  career  in  painting  by  strict  atten- 
tion to  form,  colour,  and  values,  even  as 
did  Poussin,  Chardin,  Prudhon,  David, 
Ingres,  Delacroix,  Corot,  and  Millet,  to 

[161] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

trace  back  the  vigorous  genealogy  of 
French  art  to  its  progenitors;  whose 
prior  existence  is  blatantly  denied  by  still 
others,  though  their  very  presence  in  the 
field  of  art  would  seem  to  prove  the 
contrary. 

It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  this  unrest  and 
discontent  with  past  conditions  differs 
in  more  than  in  magnitude  of  expression 
from  the  passions  that  the  time  of  which 
I  write  knew. 

The  accepted  men  of  to-day — Millet, 
Puvis  de  Chavannes,  Manet,  and  Monet 
-were  then  the  prophets  of  the  future, 
and  who  shall  say  that  of  the  present  un- 
rest no  good  shall  come  ?  But,  since  in  our 
craft  we  deal  with  very  positive  material 
and  dimensional  conditions,  painting  with- 
out form  or  sculpture  without  structure, 
which  some  late  hardy  spirits  appear  to 
attempt,  seems  foredoomed  to  brief  exist- 
ence. The  men  cited  above,  from  Poussin 
down,  were  all  considered  dangerous  inno- 

[162] 


'k  CEdipus,"  by  Ingres,  in  the  Louvre  Museum 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

vators  at  the  outset  of  their  careers.  The 
"CEdipus,"  by  Ingres,  which  to-day  in 
the  Louvre  appears  to  us  the  quintes- 
sence of  classical  conformity,  was  greeted 
by  critical  Paris,  in  1806,  with  very  much 
the  same  severity  as  the  painters  of  the 
Institute  visited  upon  the  "Sower,"  of 
Millet,  fifty  years  after.  Yet  both  men, 
strangely  dissimilar  as  their  work  ap- 
pears, were  subject  to  the  same  classic 
influence,  and  equally  desirous  to  in- 
terpret nature  according  to  rules  which 
were  as  old  as  Greek  art.  Ingres  had 
simply  dared  to  take  a  beautiful  human 
form,  to  draw  it  with  all  its  characteristics 
of  individuality,  without  reducing  it  to  a 
mere  copy  of  an  antique  statue;  Millet 
had  looked  upon  the  figures  of  the  earlier 
Greeks  and  had  created  his  man  of  the 
fields  with  the  same  simplicity  of  line  and 
of  gesture — and  these  two  reverent  follow- 
ers of  old  traditions  were,  at  fifty  years  of 
interval,  classed  as  dangerous  innovators. 

[163] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

Therefore  it  behooves  us,  children  of  a 
later  day,  to  be  cautious  in  our  prophecies 
of  ultimate  survival,  and,  though  I  own 
that  the  present  vagaries  of  M.  Matisse 
and  some  of  his  followers — French  and 
Franco-American — move  me  to  wonder, 
it  is  perhaps  as  well  to  imitate  the  dis- 
cretion of  one  of  the  wisest  men  that  the 
world  has  known,  and,  in  the  presence 
of  this  moot  question,  to  say  with  old 
Montaigne,  "Who  knoweth?" 

Above  all  should  I  have  the  grace  to 
adopt  this  attitude,  for  my  student  days 
were  spent  in  following  unbeaten  tracks, 
and  to-day  I  take  pride  in  the  fact  that 
any  manifestation  of  art  of  whatever 
character  has  power  to  excite  my  keenest 
interest,  however  often  it  may  escape  my 
comprehension. 

It  took  me  long  to  find  myself,  following 
the  time  of  my  first  arrival  in  Paris.  At 
first  I  entered  the  atelier  of  Gerome 
in  the  Ecole  des  Beaux- Arts.  Here  I 

[164] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

found  about  seventy  students  crowded 
into  a  room  that  was  scarcely  large  enough 
for  half  the  number,  heated  in  primitive 
fashion,  by  a  circular  iron  stove  in  which 
wood  was  burned,  and  with  windows 
hermetically  closed  at  all  seasons.  I  men- 
tion these  physical  drawbacks  in  order 
that  the  better  hygienic  conditions  of  our 
modern  schools  may  be  appreciated, 
and  also  for  the  reason  that  the  foul  air 
and  the  difficulty  of  working  in  such  a 
compact  mass  of  humanity  finally  drove 
me  to  another  atelier  and  another  master. 
Of  Gerome  as  a  master  I  could  say 
much.  His  long  service  in  the  school,  last- 
ing forty  years  and  only  ceasing  shortly 
before  his  death,  was  of  incalculable  ben- 
efit to  succeeding  generations  of  paint- 
ers, and  his  vitality  and  interest  were 
such  that  he  never  suffered  his  instruc- 
tion to  become  stereotyped  and  super- 
ficial. Principles  of  sternest  classicism  he 
had,  and  to  the  last  his  voice  was  raised 
F1651 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

against  some  of  the  modern  tendencies 
of  art,  tendencies  that  he  had  the  sorrow 
to  see  exemplified  in  many  of  his  best 
pupils,  so  strong  is  the  trend  of  progressive 
evolution  in  art  against  which  conserva- 
atism  is  arrayed  in  vain.  But  with  all  his 
conservative  spirit,  he  directed  and  ap- 
proved the  individuality  of  expression  in 
the  work  of  certain  of  his  students  whose 
natures  were  diametrically  opposed  to  his 
own.  I  can  bear  witness  that  there  were 
none  of  us  working  under  him,  and  I 
can  certainly  count  myself  as  the  least 
conspicuous  of  his  class,  but  who  felt 
that  his  eagle  eye  kept  absolute  control 
of  our  effort.  This  among  the  thousands 
of  pupils  that  he  had  already  known  at 
the  time  of  my  brief  sojourn  under  his 
influence  is  sufficiently  astonishing. 

When  we  take  into  consideration  that  this 
long  and  untiring  service  was  given  twice 
a  week,  two  half  days  taken  from  his 
equally  astonishing  fertility  of  production, 

[166] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

as  a  gratuitous  service  to  art,  given  in 
return  for  like  benefits  enjoyed  in  his 
youth,  it  constitutes  an  unselfish  service 
for  the  benefit  of  his  kind  that  calls  for 
grateful  admiration.  Each  of  the  mas- 
ters who  are  given  the  direction  of  the 
various  ateliers  of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux- 
Arts,  ateliers  of  architecture,  painting,  and 
sculpture,  three  of  each,  nine  in  all,  re- 
ceives an  annual  honorarium  of  twelve 
hundred  francs,  about  two  hundred  and 
forty  dollars,  and  as  they  are  all  men  of  the 
highest  standing  in  their  professions,  the 
pecuniary  sacrifice  involved  in  their  hon- 
ourable service  is  very  considerable.  The 
honour  is  one,  however,  that  naturally 
brings  recompense  of  another  nature,  and 
the  rule  of  noblesse  oblige  is  so  effectual 
that  any  French  artist,  outside  of  the 
government  schools,  who  finds  sufficient 
following  to  establish  a  class  of  students, 
gladly  serves  without  any  pecuniary  re- 
ward. The  expenses  of  studio  hire,  of 

[167] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

models,  etc.,  are  borne  by  subscription 
among  the  students,  but  the  master's 
services  are  free.  It  is  thus  that  many  of 
the  ateliers  of  Paris  are  formed,  as  was 
that  of  Carolus  Duran,  where  I  studied 
later,  and  here  our  master,  a  busy  por- 
trait painter,  cheerfully  gave  of  his  time 
and  his  knowledge  for  the  benefit  of  his 
younger  brothers  in  art. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  my  early 
experience  was  somewhat  paradoxical. 
I  entered  the  atelier  of  Gerome  without 
previous  study  of  any  kind,  but  I  had 
nevertheless  been  a  producing  artist,  sup- 
porting myself  by  my  work  for  two  years, 
and  had  developed  a  certain  facility  of 
invention  and  a  reasonable  degree  of  exe- 
cution that  had  brought  me  some  little 
success  in  my  native  land.  I  was  virtually 
at  the  threshold  of  my  career  however, 
for  I  had  never  followed  the  definite 
course  of  drawing  from  the  cast  and 
from  life  that  marks  the  first  steps  of  the 

[168] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

student's  effort.  Consequently  I  was  ab- 
solutely submissive  when  Gerome,  after 
questioning  me,  as  I  wisely  concluded  to 
show  him  none  of  the  work  I  had  done, 
placed  me  in  the  lowest  rank  of  the 
school.  Evidently,  however,  I  had  de- 
veloped in  my  own  manner  some  little 
skill  in  drawing,  for  after  I  had  made 
two  drawings  from  the  antique  my  mas- 
ter placed  me  in  the  life  class,  a  promo- 
tion that  at  least  showed  how  carefully  he 
judged  the  first  efforts  of  a  strange  and 
new  pupil. 

In  some  ways  I  esteem  myself  fortunate 
in  thus  having  escaped  what  I  fear 
most  students  consider  the  "grind"  of 
the  antique.  Let  me  hasten  to  say  that 
I  believe  there  are  few  men  who  have 
a  more  consistent  admiration  for  antique 
sculpture  than  I,  or  who  to  this  day 
more  frequently  lose  themselves  in  its 
study.  It  has,  as  perhaps  some  of  my 
work  may  show,  been  one  of  the  greatest 

[169] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

influences  that  has  profited  my  effort, 
in  so  far  as  intention  counts  at  least, 
and  I  know  of  no  benefit  to  art  greater 
than  that  which  has  resulted  from  the 
fortuitous  preservation  of  the  immortal 
works  of  Greek  sculpture. 

Later  in  my  life,  and  from  my  own 
experience  as  a  teacher,  I  have  evolved 
a  theory  which  I  would  fain  see  estab- 
lished as  a  practice  in  our  art  schools. 
It  has  constantly  been  borne  in  upon  me, 
from  the  attitude  of  the  average  student 
who  has  passed  weeks  and  months  in 
trying  his  'prentice  hand  in  drawing 
from  these  noblest  creations  of  art,  that 
their  finer  essence  escapes  him.  The 
simplified  form,  the  austere  convention 
of  their  treatment,  removes  them  from  a 
superficial  resemblance  to  the  average 
human  figure,  as  it  appears  to  the  student 
at  the  next  step  of  his  education;  when 
he  enters  the  life  class.  Compare,  for  in- 
stance, the  Theseus  or  the  Discobolus 

[170] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

with  the  common  variety  of  model  that 
poses  in  the  school.  It  seems  a  pity  that 
these  spiritualised  renditions  of  the  typi- 
cal human  form,  the  highest  expression 
of  the  most  gifted  artists  that  the  world 
has  known,  should  be  debased  to  serve 
as  mere  rules  of  grammar,  for  the  halting 
phrases  of  the  artist  before  he  has  learned 
to  speak. 

Upon  the  other  hand  the  immobile  statue 
is  undoubtedly  the  one,  and  the  only  one 
model  that  we  can  place  before  the  stu- 
dent in  order  that  he  may  study  the 
structure  and  proportion  of  the  human 
figure.  But  the  world  is  full  of  good  mod- 
ern sculpture,  where  the  figures  of  men 
and  women  are  modelled  in  much  closer 
resemblance  to  the  average  of  the  human 
form  as  we  find  it  in  life  than  in  the 
subtilised  planes  and  simplified  details 
of  Greek  sculpture.  It  is  a  choice  from 
among  these  sculptures  of  the  modern 
school  that  I  would  place  before  our 

[171] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

younger  students,  and  I  would  jealously 
treasure  these  nobler  works  of  Greek 
art,  as  a  recompense  to  accord  to  those 
more  experienced,  when  their  study  from 
life  has  accentuated  a  tendency  to  give 
too  great  value  to  the  accidental  and  indi- 
vidual characteristics  of  the  living  model, 
as  a  corrective  that  would  reveal  to  them 
the  nobler  element  to  be  incorporated  in 
their  work,  from  the  study  of  this  more 
typical  humanity,  expressed  through  the 
mastery  of  Phidias  or  Praxiteles. 

In  my  personal  experience  at  least  I 
am  sincerely  glad  that  these  works  have 
never  been  to  me  other  than  the  highest 
influence  of  my  artistic  life,  and  that  I 
by  chance  escaped  confounding  the  Venus 
of  Milo  with  the  blocks  or  cubes  that  we 
labour  over  in  the  attempt  to  train  our 
eyes  to  see  proportion  or  light  and  shade. 

The  Venus  of  Milo,  for  that  matter, 
counts  for  much,  as  I  look  retrospec- 
tively on  these  early  days.  Chance,  which 

[172] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

had  led  me  to  the  Salon  on  my  arrival 
in  Paris,  directed  my  first  entrance  to  the 
Louvre  by  the  door  .which  faces  the  garden 
in  the  court.  A  long  series  of  galleries  on 
the  ground-floor  leads  one  on,  through 
rooms  filled  with  many  examples  of  an- 
tique sculpture,  to  where,  quite  at  the  end 
of  the  vista,  in  a  shrine  consecrated  to 
her  own  beauty,  the  Venus  of  Milo 
glimmers  like  8  star.  It  is  an  experience 
that  may  be  common  to  all  who  go  to 
Paris,  it  is  one  that  has  never  failed  to 
stir  my  heart  on  successive  visits  to  the 
Louvre.  Only  last  summer  did  this  again 
come  true,  and  it  was  with  much  riiore 
than  retrospective  emotion  that,  each  time 
that  I  entered  the  Louvre,  I  hastened 
down  this  long  corridor,  drawn  as  though 
by  a  magnet  to  the  supreme  beauty  of 
this  noble  work;  of  which  no  plaster 
replica  gives  more  than  the  superficial 
aspect  of  the  original  marble,  still  bearing 
something  of  the  impress  of  the  sculp- 

[1731 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

tor's  hand,  and  coloured  by  time  to  the 
transparent  glow  of  living  flesh. 

I  think  that  as  a  rule  the  student  of  paint- 
ing is  too  little  affected  by  the  sister  art 
of  sculpture.  Undoubtedly  modern  art 
has  suffered  from  over-specialisation,  by 
which  each  artist  is  prone  to  confine  his 
effort  to  some  one  branch  of  his  craft. 
The  earlier  men,  when  by  actual  practice 
they  were  not  in  turn  architects,  painters, 
and  sculptors,  were  in  theory  at  least 
far  more  conversant  with  all  the  branches 
of  art  than  we  are  to-day,  when  we  hear  the 
practitioner  of  one  art  avow  unblushingly 
that  he  knows  nothing  about  the  other. 

To  any  student  who  goes  to  Paris, 
however,  I  strongly  urge  a  systematic 
study  of  French  sculpture.  Within  the 
walls  of  the  Louvre  he  will  find  in  consecu- 
tive order  examples  of  the  national  spirit 
as  applied  to  sculpture  that  will  show 
from  the  time  of  the  Renaissance  until 
our  day  that  the  French  have  been  mas- 

[174] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

ters  of  form.  French  painting,  which 
elsewhere  in  the  Louvre  can  be  followed 
in  the  same  admirable  order,  suffers  in 
its  long  history  periods  and  gaps  of  years 
when  the  product  of  the  painter  counted 
little,  but  since  its  first  inception  the 
school  of  sculpture  has  never  known 
such  lapses.  As  an  exponent  of  Gallic 
effort  in  art  it  is  even  more  significant 
than  is  French  painting  of  a  certain 
ardent  spirit  of  conception,  controlled 
by  a  reasoning  faculty  that  permits  the 
artist  to  give  shape  to  his  fancy  only  when 
the  embryonic  idea  has  become  vital  and 
the  skill  for  its  expression  acquired. 
Though,  at  the  time  of  which  I  speak, 
I  passed  many  hours  in  the  sculpture 
galleries,  and  though  I  return  there  with 
undiminished  interest,  it  was  in  the  upper 
galleries  of  the  Louvre,  among  the  paint- 
ings, that  I  fairly  revelled.  Again  I  must 
remind  you  how  much  more  the  student 
of  to-day  is  familiar  with  all  that  was 

[175] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

new  to  me  then  as  the  full  glories  of  this 
great  treasure-house  of  art  were  revealed. 
Yet  to  have  the  great  canvas  of  the 
"Marriage  at  Cana,"  by  Paul  Veronese, 
spread  before  you,  to  see  the  glowing 
colour  of  Titian's  "Entombment,"  to 
look  into  the  eyes  of  Leonardo's  "Monna 
Lisa,"  or  to  linger  in  the  enchanted 
landscape  of  Giorgione's  "Venetian  Pas- 
toral," is  an  experience  for  which  no 
previous  study  of  photographs  from  the 
originals  fully  prepares  you,  and  is  one 
that  the  more  often  you  repeat  it  grows 
the  more  in  value.  These  were  indeed 
brave  days  of  youth  when  the  Louvre 
was  new,  but  I  have  the  testimony  of 
others  to  add  to  my  own  conviction  that 
with  each  successive  visit  these  works 
became  more  precious,  more  influential, 
more  absolutely  necessary  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  artist,  young  or  old,  no 
matter  what  may  be  the  aim  or  the  scope 
of  his  efforts. 

[176] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

Later  visits  to  Italy  have  increased  my 
sense  of  the  sum  of  service  that  the  great 
artists  of  the  past  in  the  Old  World  can 
still  render  to  us  children  of  the  New. 
The  true  Raphael  you  will  never  know 
by  his  isolated  easel  pictures  in  the  gal- 
leries, nor  until  you  can  gaze  upon  his 
great  wall  paintings  in  the  Vatican,  and 
realise  before  his  "School  of  Athens"  or 
his  "Jurisprudence"  that  he  was  not 
only  a  master  of  design,  a  skilful  com- 
poser of  groups,  and  a  draughtsman 
where  accuracy  of  form  is  joined  to  a 
style  in  the  rendition  of  the  human 
figure  that  none  have  approached,  but 
a  charming  colourist  as  well.  Nor  do 
I  know  a  more  salutary  school  for  a 
modern  painter  than  the  study  of  the 
primitive  masters  of  Italy  and  those  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  Peculiarly  valuable 
are  these  works  to  us  in  our  comparative 
lack  of  the  long-established  traditions 
that  the  older  nations  know,  for  in  this 

[177] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

first  flowering  of  painting,  from  Giotto 
onward,  we  may  see  how  each  man  went 
to  nature  for  himself,  each  succeeding 
painter  wresting  from  his  study  some 
new  knowledge  to  add  to  that  received 
from  his  predecessors. 

There  is  so  little  that  is  really  new  in 
our  old  art  that  you  may  see  in  some 
half-effaced  fresco  on  a  wall  in  Florence 
the  portrayal  of  men  and  women  in  their 
habits  as  they  lived,  studied  if  not  ac- 
tually painted  in  the  open  air,  with  a 
truth  of  observation  which  succeeding 
generations  of  painters  shut  up  in  their 
studios,  forgot,  until,  late  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  beauty  of  the  diffused  light 
of  out-of-doors  was  rediscovered  as  a 
triumph  of  modern  painting. 

For  the  artist  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his 
career  there  is  probably  no  more  useful 
storehouse  of  the  treasures  of  art  than  the 
Louvre,  for  virtually  all  schools  are  fair- 
ly well  represented  there,  and  if  further 

[178] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

travel  be  debarred  from  circumstances  of 
time  or  money,  he  is  fortunate  who  has 
such  a  fair  field  to  browse  upon. 

Much  of  my  time  I  know  was  spent  there 
when  out  of  school.  I  early  decided  that 
the  habit  of  most  of  my  French  friends 
to  pass  four  hours  of  the  morning  work- 
ing from  life  was  well  founded,  and  that 
this  was  as  long  a  time  in  the  day's 
work  as  could  be  put  to  profit.  It  is 
not  uncommon  with  earnest,  but  I  think 
misguided,  students  to  pass  the  morning 
working  from  life,  the  afternoon  in  the 
school,  perhaps  in  a  portrait  class,  and 
the  evening  drawing  in  the  night-school. 
There  are,  however,  so  many  elements 
which  should  rightly  enter  into  an  artist's 
education,  beyond  the  skill  of  producing 
studies  in  the  life  class,  that  four  hours' 
concentration  upon  such  work  should  be 
sufficient,  leaving  the  student's  mind  free 
to  study  in  the  galleries,  to  work  at  home 
upon  compositions  of  his  own,  or  even  to 
f  1791 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

haunt  the  libraries  and  learn  something 
of  literature ;  much  touching  directly  upon 
his  own  pursuit  and  all  valuable  to  his 
larger  culture.  I  had,  moreover,  Gerome's 
own  word  that  after  a  morning's  concen- 
trated effort  in  rendering  the  constantly 
changing  aspects  of  a  model,  the  mind 
became  incapable  of  more  than  a  mechan- 
ical observation  and  further  application 
mere  unintelligent  industry. 

The  closing  of  Gerome's  atelier  for  the 
summer  vacation  scattered  the  students 
in  various  directions  and  my  persevering 
good  fortune  sent  me  to  Barbizon.  Here 
there  still  lived  at  that  time  Jean  Fra^ois 
Millet,  and  though  my  association  with 
him  was  of  the  slightest,  no  one  could  ap- 
proach a  man  of  his  character  without  re- 
ceiving an  impress  that  lasts  through  life. 

He  was  the  highest  type  of  artist  that 
our  age  has  seen.  Individual  to  the  degree 
of  isolation  from  his  kind,  so  that  his 
essentially  simple  message  to  the  world 

[180] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

was  long  in  penetrating  the  density  of  a 
period  of  art  given  up  to  trivialities  and 
exposition  of  superficial  skill,  yet  observ- 
ant of  and  receptive  to  every  tradition 
of  the  great  masters  of  painting,  he  was  as 
a  man  equally  simple  to  approach  and 
as  a  counsellor  equally  insistent  upon 
the  necessity  of  engrafting  present  effort 
on  the  sturdy  trunk  of  the  past.  The  half- 
dozen  times  that  I  was  privileged  to 
speak  with  him,  though  the  problems 
which  I  presented  for  his  solution  were 
only  those  that  assail  ignorance  and 
youth,  remain  in  my  memory  as  though  it 
had  been  my  good  fortune  to  hold  con- 
verse with  Boaz,  Biblical  master  of  the 
harvest;  or  rather  with  some  Virgilian 
demi-god  of  the  fields,  kindly  and  solici- 
tous in  his  wise  husbandry  to  direct  a 
youthful  gleaner  to  where  the  store  of 
grain  fell  thickest. 

Of  less  import,  but  yet  a  most  excellent 
influence  for  a  young  man's  work,  was  the 

[181] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

company  of  painters  of  all  ages  and  con- 
ditions that  forgathered  in  Barbizon  in 
those  days.  We  hear  much  of  the  benefits 
of  an  artistic  atmosphere.  Undoubtedly 
there  exists  a  great  incentive  to  work  when 
many  are  busily  intent  upon  a  common 
effort,  and  much  progress  can  be  made 
as  we  profit  by  comparing  differing  ren- 
ditions of  nature,  while  all  may  have  suc- 
ceeded in  varying  degrees  in  capturing 
some  of  her  myriad  secrets. 

It  has  been  and  still  remains  the  habit 
of  painters  to  congregate  in  various  vil- 
lages of  France,  and  it  is  pleasant  to 
think  that  a  like  good  habit  has  been 
to  some  extent  transplanted  to  these 
shores.  Gloucester,  in  Massachusetts, 
East  Hampton,  upon  Long  Island,  and 
Lyme,  in  Connecticut,  have  all  known 
their  artist  colonists,  and  each  settlement 
of  this  kind  is  fruitful  in  results.  It  per- 
petuates to  some  extent  the  beneficial 
influence  of  the  art  school,  for  it  is  an 

[1821 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

open  secret,  and  may  be  said  without 
prejudice  to  the  devoted  services  of  the 
masters  who  have  instructed  us,  that 
what  we  chiefly  learn  in  the  atelier  we 
acquire  from  each  other;  from  the  com- 
mon endeavour  to  depict  the  nature  be- 
fore us;  by  the  individual  effort  of  our 
own  personality,  aided  and  guided  by  the 
comrade  who  has  made  a  step  in  advance. 

This  first  summer  in  France  remains 
above  all  memorable  to  me,  for  it  was 
there  at  Barbizon  I  essayed  to  paint  my 
first  picture.  I  had  only  drawn  in  the  life 
class  in  Gerome's  atelier,  but  my  two 
previous  years  in  New  York  had  been 
devoted  to  illustration,  and  I  fear  that 
the  early  foundation  of  the  picture-mak- 
ing habit  had  more  than  once  made  the 
atelier  work  irksome,  as  indeed  it  did  dur- 
ing all  my  Parisian  days  in  the  school. 

The  picture  I  attempted  was  at  least 
little  more  than  a  study  from  life,  for  I 
was  able  to  place  a  peasant  mother  by 

[183] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  side  of  a  cradle,  her  work  in  her  hands 
as  she  bent  over  the  child,  the  whole 
seen  in  the  surrounding  of  her  home. 

This  work  would  hardly  be  otherwise 
notable  had  it  not  attracted  the  atten- 
tion of  Munkacsy,  the  Hungarian  painter, 
who  was  that  summer  at  Barbizon. 
From  him  I  received  the  advice  to  shun 
all  schooling,  to  depend  upon  what  he 
was  pleased  to  call  my  natural  talent, 
and  to  boldly  set  to  work  to  paint  a 
number  of  compositions  which  I  showed 
him;  for  from  the  first  I  was  fairly  prolific 
in  invention  and  had  made  many  sketches 
for  projected  pictures — as  I  do  still — some 
of  which  I  hope  I  may  live  long  enough 
to  carry  out.  Munkacsy's  advice  was  an 
early  instance  of  the  revolt,  which  has 
gained  force  in  France  since  that  day, 
against  the  teachings  of  the  school.  The 
seed  fell  upon  ground  that  was  fertile 
so  far  as  my  inclinations  prompted,  but 
a  word  from  Millet,  who  simply  told  me 

[184] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

that  I  could  never  talk  intelligibly  until 
I  had  mastered  the  rules  of  grammar, 
promptly  arrested  the  growth  of  what 
would  most  certainly  have  been  a  crop 
of  weeds — whatever  may  be  the  harvest 
I  have  garnered. 

Upon  my  return  to  Paris,  the  condi- 
tions of  the  over-crowded  atelier  in  the 
Beaux-Arts  drove  me  out  to  be  num- 
bered among  the  newly  enlisted  pupils  of 
Carolus  Duran.  Here  I,  in  common  with 
a  number  of  others,  men  who  like  John 
Sargent,  Carroll  Beckwith,  Frank  Fowler, 
Birge  Harrison,  and  Theodore  Robinson, 
among  our  compatriots  have  all  their 
part  in  our  present-day  art,  was  to  meet 
with  a  radical  innovation  in  the  teaching 
of  painting.  We  were  all,  no  matter  what 
our  previous  lack  of  familiarity  with  colour 
had  been,  given  a  model,  a  palette  and 
brushes,  and  told  to  render  what  we  saw. 

We  apparently  saw  some  very  curious 
aspects  of  nature,  if  the  report  of  our 

[185] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

vision  could  be  judged  by  our  produc- 
tions. But  ill-shapen  and  mud-coloured 
as  were  our  first  studies,  a  glimmer  of 
essential  truth  soon  penetrated  our  under- 
standing. Duran's  theory  was  undeniably 
logical.  Objects  in  nature  relieve  one 
against  each  other  by  the  relative  values 
of  light  or  shade  which  accompany  and 
are  a  part  of  each  local  colour.  An  out- 
line, a  contour,  is,  as  we  all  know,  a  pure 
convention  and  the  point  with  which  we 
ordinarily  draw  is  merely  a  convenient 
tool  for  indicating  where  the  mass  of 
one  object  relieves  against  another,  which, 
when  thus  defined,  we  all  know  also  to 
be  a  false  method  of  rendering  what  we 
see.  We  habitually  draw,  and  are  taught 
to  do  so,  a  figure  upon  our  white  paper, 
generally  modelling  it  until  it  presents  a 
light  gray  mass  against  the  white  back- 
ground, when  in  reality  what  we  see  is 
a  figure  which  relieves  in  light  against 
a  darker  background.  This  is  of  course 

[186] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

an  accepted  convention,  as  old  as  art  it- 
self, and  was  probably  invented  by  the  tra- 
ditional cave-dweller,  who  first  sketched 
the  megatherium.  It  divides,  however,  the 
painter's  final  production  into  two  differ- 
ent and  contrary  processes  and,  while  it 
may  be  wise  to  facilitate  the  student's  pri- 
mary acquaintance  with  form  by  avoiding 
the  conflicting  appeal  of  colour,  it  estab- 
lishes a  habit  of  seeing  falsely,  which  he 
is  forced  to  correct  when  he  takes  up  the 
study  of  colour. 

As  was  but  natural  the  Duran  atelier 
was  considered  for  a  time  to  be  a  hot-bed 
of  revolution,  and  it  took  no  little  courage 
to  maintain  one's  convictions  in  the  face 
of  the  censure  which  loyalty  to  our 
master  provoked.  This  was  all  the  more 
so  because  there  was  at  first  little  in  the 
work  we  produced  that  appeared  to  prom- 
ise ultimate  success.  But  after  a  time,  as 
the  hand  became  more  skilful  in  the  use 
of  pigment,  we  were  able  to  retain  some 

[187] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

semblance  of  form  and  to  keep  our  colour 
reasonably  pure,  and  little  by  little  the 
atelier  was  able  to  vindicate  the  logic  of 
our  master's  theories  by  works  which, 
if  not  masterpieces,  were  equal  to  the 
average  productions  of  other  studios. 

Even  at  this  late  day  and  despite  the 
fact  that  this  method  has  not  revolution- 
ised the  practice  of  the  schools,  I  am  in- 
clined to  think  that,  if  it  makes  the  initial 
steps  more  halting,  and  the  pupil's  prob- 
lems temporarily  more  complex,  it  gives 
as  a  result  a  greater  freedom  with  the 
brush,  which  is  the  ultimate  instrument 
with  which  the  painter  works,  and  teaches 
him  to  see  more  logically  the  mass  and 
volume  of  the  objects  he  depicts  in  their 
definite  form  and  colour.  It  certainly 
teaches  him  to  avoid  what  the  usual 
method  occasionally  leads  him  to  pro- 
duce, that  is  to  say,  a  tinted  drawing;  a 
work  where  the  painter  is  so  anxious  to 
retain  the  form  once  indicated  that  his 

[188] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

colour  is  applied  timidly,  and  the  com- 
pleted picture  retains  the  marks  of  the 
primary  and  secondary  processes.  Since 
the  days  of  which  I  speak,  I  have  occa- 
sionally tried  with  pupils  of  my  own  to 
familiarise  their  hands  with  the  use  of  pig- 
ment by  having  them  paint  in  mono- 
chrome, observing  the  values  carefully 
and  carrying  a  study  in  all  its  relations 
as  far  as  possible,  before  allowing  them 
to  use  colour.  This  offers  a  real  advan- 
tage over  any  study  in  complete  light 
and  shade  in  charcoal  or  crayon,  as  the 
material  is  the  same  that  they  will  use 
later  on,  when  they  are  initiated  into  the 
use  of  full  colour. 

I  could  expatiate  at  great  length  upon 
many  technical  points  and  describe  the 
conditions  of  study  in  Paris,  but  that  since 
the  days  of  which  I  speak  the  life  that  has 
grown  up  and  the  problems  that  are  met 
in  our  own  art  schools  at  home  duplicate 
very  largely  the  conditions  that  then  ex- 

[189] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

isted  and  still  exist  abroad.  It  was  all  new 
to  my  youth,  but,  as  I  have  already  said, 
we  have  since  then  established  our  own 
schools  so  nearly  upon  the  model  of  those 
of  the  Old  World  that  a  pupil  to-day  can 
go  almost  as  far  forward  in  his  career 
technically  as  he  can  in  Europe. 

What  we  still  lack  are  the  elements 
that  would  profit  the  post-graduate  of  our 
schools,  that  yet  and  for  many  years 
to  come  will  make  a  sojourn  abroad, 
following  his  scholastic  training  here, 
most  desirable  if  not  absolutely  essential. 

In  the  first  place  we  have  not  and  never 
can  have  the  great  collections  that  are 
gathered  and  jealously  guarded  in  the 
galleries  of  Europe.  Year  by  year  we 
have  become  enriched  by  examples  of 
the  great  artists  of  the  past,  and  the  con- 
temporary work  of  Europe  is  constantly 
being  brought  to  us,  but  for  the  greater 
works  of  the  older  masters  we  must  seek 
in  the  Old  World.  We  shall  probably  never 

[190] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

be  able  to  obtain  a  really  great  work  by 
Paul  Veronese,  certainly  never  one  of  a 
magnitude  of  achievement  like  the  "Mar- 
riage at  Cana,"  in  the  Louvre.  For  the 
best  of  Rubens  we  must  seek  in  a  dozen 
galleries  of  Europe;  for  Velasquez  we 
must  go  to  Madrid,  which  shares  the 
Titians  with  Italy.  How  can  we  ever 
hope  to  see  a  work  of  Titian  like  "Sacred 
and  Profane  Love,"  in  the  Borghese  gal- 
lery at  Rome,  on  this  side  of  the  water  ? 
Raphael,  as  I  have  already  said,  reigns 
in  the  Vatican  and  only  fully  discloses 
his  achievement  there, — where  he  shares 
the  throne  with  the  other  archangel, — 
Michael ! 

Nor  is  it  by  the  older  art  alone  that 
Europe  calls  new  disciples  to  her.  To 
speak  of  France,  which  I  know  best,  the 
whole  long  affiliation  of  its  art  can  only 
be  followed  in  the  Louvre  and  in  its  rich 
provincial  museums.  Only  last  summer 
I,  who  fancied  that  I  knew  Millet's  art 

[191] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

as  thoroughly  as  one  who  has  never  ne- 
glected an  opportunity  to  see  the  slight- 
est of  his  works  could  know  it,  saw  for 
the  first  time  in  the  museum  at  Rouen  the 
portrait  of  a  naval  officer  painted  by  him 
that,  differing  in  manner,  Velasquez 
might  have  signed.  And  so  in  various 
parts  of  France  you  may  come  upon 
works  which  are  absolutely  necessary  to 
a  full  knowledge  of  their  best  men. 

Even  in  the  sales  which  occur  here  we 
have  not  yet  learned  to  keep  the  best, 
and  the  other  day  in  New  York,  Berlin 
took  back  to  Europe  a  Rubens  from  the 
Yerkes  collection,  a  picture  far  more 
typical  than  any  that  we  have  by  that 
master  in  our  museums.  Not  so  many 
years  ago  at  the  sale  of  the  collection  be- 
longing to  Jules  Stewart,  of  Paris,  which 
was  brought  to  New  York  for  disposal, 
we  found  means  to  purchase  for  forty 
thousand  dollars  a  charming  and  toy- 
like  production  of  Fortuny, — "veritable 

[192] 


"Portrait  of  a  Marine  Officer,"  by  J.  F.  Millet,  in 
the  Museum  at  Rouen 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

microcosm  of  virtuosity "  that  it  is — 
and  permitted  enlightened  emissaries  from 
France  to  repurchase  and  bear  triumph- 
antly back  to  their  country  Baudry's 
masterpiece,  "The  Pearl  and  the  Wave," 
for  the  pitiful  sum  of  six  thousand  dollars. 
But  if  Europe  can  still  offer  us  oppor- 
tunities for  the  fuller  knowledge  of  the 
past  of  art,  the  best  of  its  offering  and  the 
most  useful  for  the  upbuilding  of  our 
adolescent  school  at  home  is  the  larger 
understanding  of  the  scope  of  our  under- 
taking. Every  American  artist  who  has 
existed  so  far  or  will  exist  for  years  to  come 
should  be  born  with  a  missionary  spirit. 
His  best  preaching  will  be  by  what  he  pro- 
duces ;  in  the  measure  that  his  art  is  high 
in  aim  and  proficient  in  skill,  so  will  he 
be  listened  to,  when  he  chooses  to  talk — 
for  our  people  dearly  love  to  hear  about 
art  already.  But  this  readiness  to  learn 
imposes  a  duty  upon  us  all  to  be  able 

by  example  and  precept  to  instruct. 
F 1931 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

For  all  that  Europe  can  still  teach  our 
artists,  a  summer  holiday  will  not  suffice. 
It  is  necessary  to  dig  deeper  into  the  soil 
in  which  art  has  flourished.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  adopt  principles  which  may  be  at 
variance  with  many  of  our  accepted  ideas 
at  home,  our  dominant  love  for  quick 
results,  for  instance.  We  may  even  con- 
demn ourselves  to  be  considered  failures, 
if  we  do  not  follow  each  changing  fashion 
in  art  as  it  appears.  But  for  our  own  self- 
respect,  and  for  our  ultimate  influence 
upon  the  environment  in  which  we  live, 
we  can  do  a  few  simple  things,  if  we 
cherish  our  convictions  and  if  we  love 
our  art. 

First,  we  may  earn  our  living  in  any 
way  we  are  permitted  to  do  so,  and 
live  as  modestly  as  possible,  knowing 
that  every  penny  saved  from  useless  ex- 
penditure we  can  put  into  our  work. 
Secondly,  we  can  uphold  the  ancient 
honour  of  our  craft  by  never  counting 

[194] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

the  quality  of  our  product  by  the  quan- 
tity of  its  remuneration.  If  you  are 
poorly  paid  in  money,  find  recompense 
in  the  work;  it  is  the  artist's  way.  Thirdly, 
if  your  task  is  prescribed  by  which  you 
earn  your  bread,  imitate  the  ancient  ap- 
prentices of  our  guild  and  consecrate 
every  leisure  moment  to  some  work  which 
shall  represent  you  at  your  best;  keep  at 
it  until  you  know  that  it  is  the  best  you 
can  do;  it  may  spell  freedom  from  your 
irksome  task,  it  will  in  any  case  serve  to 
keep  alive  the  flame  of  art  and  embolden 
your  comrade  to  do  as  much.  Fourthly, 
and  lastly,  remember  that  already  here 
we  see  the  dawn  of  a  greater  art,  in  the 
growth  of  our  schools,  in  the  quality  of  our 
work,  and  above  all  in  its  acceptance  for 
civic  uses  in  our  public  buildings.  In  this 
instance  we  no  longer  paint  pretty  pict- 
ures for  "generous"  patrons;  as  in  a 
sister-art  the  day  of  the  Soldiers'  Mon- 
ument furnished  by  a  granite  company 

[195] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

is  past,  and  our  sculptors  are  busy  en- 
riching our  land  with  noble  works.  This 
has  been  the  work  of  the  men  of  my  gen- 
eration, and  the  lessons  of  the  larger 
outlook  and  the  higher  standard  were 
learned  from  our  Alma  Mater  of  the  Old 
World. 

Of  some  of  the  growth  of  this  higher 
standard  of  the  men  who  have  worked 
here  at  home  in  the  past  thirty  years  I 
wish  to  speak  later,  but  the  evidences  of 
this  growth  are  already  evident  to  a 
larger  world  than  ours.  We  can  still  go  far 
afield  for  public  confirmation  of  what 
some  few  of  us  know  well.  Thirty  years 
ago  there  were  two  American  painters 
who  were  hors  concours  in  the  Paris 
Salon;  to-day  there  are  thirty-six  living 
painters  and  sculptors  of  American  birth 
who  have  in  this  Old  World  of  art  attained 
that  honour  and  are  accepted  as  the  peers 
of  their  elder  brothers  of  French  birth 
by  the  artistic  tribunals  of  France. 

[196] 


EXPERIENCES  IN  THE  OLD  WORLD 

Few  of  the  liberal  professions  as  prac- 
tised in  our  New  World  have  achieved  like 
numerical  recognition  abroad,  and,  though 
our  artists  are  as  yet  largely  prophets 
without  honour  in  their  own  country, 
such  confirmation  of  their  effort  by  the 
Old  World  is  a  title  which  will  eventually 
be  recognised  at  home  and  constitutes 
a  definite  claim  upon  our  environment  to 
be  recognised  as  an  asset  of  our  national 
patrimony. 

This  again  I  say  is  the  work  of  the  men 
of  my  generation,  many  of  whom  are 
still  upon  the  field,  as  eager  and  untiring 
in  their  efforts  as  at  the  dawn  of  their 
labour.  Recruits  are  welcome  and  cannot 
be  too  numerous,  for  the  field  is  vast,  the 
yield  promises  abundance,  and  the  har- 
vest is  not  for  the  day.  The  seed  of  the 
future  is  sown  in  the  schools  we  have 
established,  and  by  the  hands  of  this  new 
generation  must  the  harvest  be  gathered. 

[197] 


THIRTY   YEARS  AT  HOME  AND 
ABROAD 

FRANCE  had  been  kind  to  me  in  more 
ways  than  I  can  tell,  and  the  five  years 
of  my  student  life  there  had  endowed  me 
with  grateful  and  enduring  affection  for 
my  foster-mother  of  the  arts.  Yet,  in  the 
closing  days  of  1877,  as  the  ship  that  bore 
me  homeward  came  in  sight  of  these 
shores,  my  heart  leaped  up  with  a  sen- 
sation, which  has  grown  with  the  elapsing 
years,  that  this  was  my  own  country,  these 
were  my  own  people,  here  was  to  be  the 
field  in  which  I  was  to  labour — whatever 
the  harvest  was  to  be. 
Time  has  shown  that  this  year,  1877, 
was  a  crucial  moment  for  American  art. 
From  the  days  of  Copley  nearly  all  our 

[198] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

artists  had  sought  their  education  abroad. 
But  the  conditions  of  isolation,  in  which 
we  lived  before  the  time  of  the  present 
swift  transatlantic  ferries,  are  not  con- 
ducive to  the  progress  of  art,  though 
this  isolation  had  given  to  our  artists  a 
fruitful  field  for  their  endeavour  de- 
void of  all  competition.  Consequently  our 
earlier  men,  in  developing  a  distinctive 
school,  as  they  did  undeniably,  had  fal- 
len into  an  error  common  to  all  human 
effort  that  is  deprived  of  the  healthy 
stimulus  of  emulation.  New  York,  as  I 
have  already  related,  had  been  generous  to 
its  artists,  and  had  aided  them  to  erect 
a  handsome  building  for  the  National 
Academy  of  Design,  which  until  1897 
remained,  with  its  close  resemblance  to 
the  Doge's  Palace  in  Venice,  one  of  the 
ornaments  of  the  city.  Here  were  held 
exhibitions  which  for  a  long  period  had 
been  the  chief  artistic  events  of  the  year, 
which  were  thronged  by  visitors  who  were 

[199] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

appreciative  of  our  artists'  intent  and 
lavish  in  their  material  encouragement. 

It  is  interesting  to  seek  out  nowadays  the 
earlier  works  of  some  of  the  men  who  were 
prominent  in  our  art  in  the  time  of  which 
I  speak,  and  note  that  these  productions, 
painted  under  the  influence  of  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  schools  where  they  studied 
in  the  Old  World,  are  fairly  equal  to 
the  standards  of  the  Europe  of  their 
day.  Standards  change  and,  when  art  is 
healthy,  are  progressive,  but  there  is  no 
one  condition  so  essential  to  its  well- 
being  as  a  constant  infusion  of  new  blood. 
This  our  native  school  had  lacked,  and 
in  the  presence  of  a  public  whose  de- 
mands were  easily  satisfied,  lacking  the 
comparison  of  other  and  more  vigorous 
productions  of  art,  its  effort  had  become 
relaxed. 

Meanwhile  the  material  growth  of  the 
country  had  attracted  the  attention  of  the 
picture  dealers  of  Europe,  and  to  the  new 

[200] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

market  for  their  wares  they  had  flocked, 
as  they  still  do,  in  increasing  numbers, 
and  by  the  novelty  of  their  offering,  if  not 
always  by  its  greater  intrinsic  merit,  a 
diversion  of  our  encouragement  of  native 
art  was  firmly  established.  Such  were  the 
conditions  already  existing  when,  in  the 
spring  of  1877,  the  Hanging  Committee 
of  the  National  Academy  Exhibition  was 
suddenly  confronted  by  six  or  eight  pict- 
ures, large  in  dimensions  in  comparison 
with  the  cabinet-size  to  which  the  ma- 
jority of  the  works  contributed  were  re- 
stricted, and  of  a  style  which  contrasted 
strangely  with  the  average  of  the  aca- 
demical productions. 

They  were  the  works  of  young  Americans 
studying  either  in  Paris  or  Munich,  who, 
without  concerted  action,  had  chosen 
that  year  to  show  to  their  compatriots 
for  the  first  time  the  result  of  their  studies 
abroad.  It  speaks  much  for  the  liberality 
of  this  now  historic  Hanging  Committee 

[201] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

that  it  gave  prominent  places  in  the  ex- 
hibition to  these  new  works;  which  in 
vigour  of  treatment,  in  the  application 
of  their  measure  of  skill,  made  up  for  any 
lack  of  definite  achievement;  inherent  to 
all  first  works,  however  much  of  promise 
they  may  evince. 

Most  of  these  young  painters  were  still 
abroad,  and  there  each  learned  for  the 
first  time  that  his  individual  effort  had 
been  multiplied  by  the  offerings  of  the 
others;  with  the  effect  that  the  whole 
appeared  like  a  concerted  invasion  into 
an  ancient  stronghold  of  American  art 
by  a  band  of  young  iconoclasts,  who  had 
only  their  birth  in  their  favour,  as  in  all 
other  qualities  they  were  considered  aliens. 
Such  at  least  was  the  verdict  of  the  more 
conservative  Academicians,  though,  as 
afterward  transpired,  the  grudging  wel- 
come accorded  to  these  works  was  con- 
fined to  a  few  who  had  the  ear  of  certain 
art  critics,  who  made  the  most  of  what 

[202] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

they  termed  a  quarrel  in  the  camp  of 
the  artists.  For  that  matter,  to  this  day 
the  average  journalist,  when  he  treats 
of  art,  dearly  loves  to  introduce  spicy 
personal  gossip  to  relieve  the  tedium  of 
the  simple  consideration  of  the  qualities 
or  defects  of  a  given  production.  Con- 
sequently there  ensued  a  wordy  war  in 
the  press,  for  the  young  invaders  found 
their  partisans,  which  had  as  a  result  the 
formation  of  a  new  art  organisation  which 
took  the  name  of  the  Society  of  American 
Artists. 

A  number  of  the  Academecians  promptly 
joined  the  new  society — John  La  Farge, 
Homer  Martin,  Samuel  Colman,  Thomas 
Moran,  George  Inness,  R.  Swain  Gifford, 
Louis  C.  Tiffany,  and  A.  Wordsworth 
Thompson — all  of  them  men  who  rec- 
ognised the  desirability  of  a  more  active 
competition  of  effort  than  was  possible 
in  the  Academy  as  then  organised.  This 
robbed  the  new  movement  of  any  out- 

[203] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ward  appearance  of  opposition  to  the 
older  association,  which,  under  the  stim- 
ulus of  friendly  rivalry,  at  once  began 
a  gradual  reorganisation  that  finally  re- 
sulted, though  only  after  twenty-seven 
years  of  the  society's  existence,  in  a  union 
of  the  two  bodies.  To  anticipate  in  this 
record  by  all  these  twenty-seven  years, 
I  may  say  that  the  National  Academy 
of  Design  realises  to-day  all  that  the 
most  advanced  founders  of  the  Society  of 
American  Artists  desired  to  attain,  in  so 
far  that  every  producing  artist  of  merit 
throughout  the  country  is  added  to  its 
membership  as  fast  as  the  machinery  of 
election,  which  is  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  its  members,  can  be  made  to  perform 
its  function.  Its  laws  governing  the  ex- 
hibition of  the  works  of  its  members  are 
as  liberal  as  those  of  any  art  society  in 
existence,  inasmuch  as  none  of  them  are 
exempted  from  the  action  of  the  Jury  of 
Selection,  except  for  a  single  work.  As  this 

[204] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

exemption  automatically  places  the  priv- 
ileged production  in  a  secondary  class,  the 
majority  of  the  members  prefer  to  submit 
their  works  to  the  jury  and  seldom  use 
their  right  to  this  privilege. 

In  election  of  juries,  in  nomination  of 
Academicians  and  election  of  Associates, 
in  all  the  purely  artistic  administration  of 
the  affairs  of  the  Academy,  every  member, 
be  he  Academician  or  Associate,  is  given 
equal  power.  The  executive  administra- 
tion of  the  affairs  of  the  organisation  is 
necessarily  performed  by  Academicians 
resident  in  New  York,  chiefly  by  a  council 
of  ten  of  its  members  elected  by  the 
whole  body  at  its  annual  meeting.  The 
wise  liberality  of  this  elastic  constitution 
places  all  artists,  whether  members  or  not, 
upon  an  equal  footing,  where  the  merit  of 
their  production  is  the  sole  consideration 
governing  its  acceptance  for  exhibition. 

The  National  Academy  is  the  oldest 
organisation  of  artists  in  the  country, 

[205] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

counting  eighty-four  years  of  existence, 
and  since  its  rejuvenation  in  1907,  by 
its  union  with  the  Society  of  American 
Artists,  and  its  adoption  of  these  liberal 
principles,  there  is  no  barrier  to  its  be- 
coming, in  fact  as  well  as  in  name, 
a  national  society,  representing  all  the 
artists  of  the  country  and  every  mani- 
festation of  the  arts  of  design.  This  would 
of  course  include  what  we  know  as  the 
applied  arts,  as  well  as  architecture,  paint- 
ing, and  sculpture,  and  it  would  appear 
as  though  its  founders  in  1826  had  fore- 
seen some  such  comprehensive  inclusion 
when  they  chose  for  its  name  the  National 
Academy  of  the  Arts  of  Design. 

Unfortunately  for  the  best  service  of  a 
society  as  universal  as  this,  the  organisa- 
tion as  yet  possesses  no  galleries  suffi- 
ciently extensive  to  carry  out  this  desir- 
able programme.  The  main  activity  of 
its  council  for  a  number  of  years  past 
has  sought  to  procure  such  galleries,  and 

[206] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

sooner  or  later  New  York  will  undoubt- 
edly furnish  an  adequate  building  where 
each  year  a  comprehensive  exhibition  of 
art  could  show  how  great  and  varied  is 
our  annual  production.  When  this  day 
comes  we  shall  have  what  the  great  cities 
of  England,  France,  Germany,  and  Italy 
have  long  possessed,  and  it  needs  no 
spirit  of  prophecy  to  foretell  that  our 
whole  country  will  feel  both  pride  and 
surprise  at  what  we  have  already  accom- 
plished in  art. 

This  partial  survey  of  present  conditions 
contrasts  strangely  in  spirit  with  those 
which  confronted  the  home-coming  youths 
of  1877.  The  half-dozen  young  painters 
who  had  shown  their  maiden  efforts  at 
the  Academy  that  spring  found  themselves 
in  New  York  in  the  early  winter.  Walter 
Shirlaw,  William  M.  Chase,  Wyatt  Eaton, 
Frederick  Dielman,  J.  Alden  Weir,  Frank 
Duveneck,  and  myself  were  those  that 
I  remember  as  having  large  pictures  in 

[207] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

this  exhibition,  where  the  contribution  of 
Augustus  Saint-Gaudens  had  been  re- 
fused, and  to  these,  in  the  formation  of  the 
new  Society,  were  promptly  added,  besides 
Saint-Gaudens,  Olin  L.  Warner,  Francis 
Lathrop,  A.  P.  Ryder,  Louis  C.  Tiffany, 
Helena  de  Kay  Gilder,  and  the  Academi- 
cians already  named,  all  these  last  being 
resident  in  New  York.  This  is  not  in  strict 
chronological  order,  as  Shirlaw,  Saint- 
Gaudens,  Eaton,  and  Mrs.  Gilder  were 
alone  present  at  the  formation  and  first 
meeting  of  the  Society  in  June,  1877, 
immediately  at  the  close  of  the  Academy 
exhibition. 

Speaking  for  myself,  the  life  that  now 
confronted  me  was  very  different  not 
only  from  that  which  I  had  led  in  Paris 
during  the  preceding  five  years,  but  from 
that  which  I  had  known  in  New  York 
before  going  abroad.  The  student  in 
Paris,  or,  indeed,  the  mature  artist  of 
birth  foreign  to  France,  has  every  facility 

[208] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

accorded  him  for  his  work,  but  he  is 
never  consulted,  never  allowed  to  take 
part  in  the  conduct  of  any  of  the  affairs 
of  art.  The  juries  of  every  exhibition  are 
exclusively  French,  and  the  thousand  and 
one  duties  which  here  fall  to  the  lot  of 
every  artist  sooner  or  later,  concerning 
what  I  may  call  the  administrative  side 
of  art,  are  there  so  many  positions  of 
preference,  often  leading  to  honours  which 
are  jealously  kept  for  the  benefit  of  the 
natives.  As  for  my  previous  experience  in 
New  York,  I  was  then  so  little  affiliated 
with  the  current  art  of  the  time  that  I 
escaped  such  service,  or  rather  it  escaped 
me. 

But  to  us  home-comers  it  soon  became 
evident  that  if  we  wished  to  see  any  change 
in  the  manner  in  which  art  was  conducted 
in  our  own  country,  it  behooved  us  to  put 
our  hands  to  the  work  and  begin  the 
changes  ourselves.  Therefore  there  fol- 
lowed interminable  meetings,  in  which 

[209] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ways  and  means  were  discussed  at  length. 
We  were  mostly  without  money  and  with- 
out credit,  but  by  some  means  a  sum 
sufficient  to  rent  a  small  gallery  was 
raised,  and  the  first  exhibition  of  the 
Society  of  American  Artists  was  held  in 
the  spring  of  1878.  The  Society  had  grown 
to  perhaps  twenty  members,  some  of 
whom  had  brought  home  with  them  pict- 
ures painted  abroad,  and  word  had  been 
sent  to  our  comrades  in  Europe,  who 
sent  over  work.  John  Sargent's  first  work 
exhibited  in  America  was  shown  there, 
a  group  of  fisher  girls  on  the  beach  at 
Cancale.  We  had  a  goodly  sprinkling  of 
works  by  men  in  New  York,  a  number 
by  members  of  the  Academy  among  them. 
From  our  meagre  funds  we  despatched 
one  of  our  members  to  Baltimore,  to  bor- 
row a  picture  by  Whistler.  This  picture, 
the  first  of  his  works  shown  in  America, 
reappeared  only  this  winter  in  New  York, 
to  be  heralded  far  and  wide  by  a  dealer 

[210] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

as  an  important  example  of  Whistler's  art, 
its  first  exhibition  in  the  Society  thirty-two 
years  ago  evidently  forgotten.  Our  mod- 
est show  was  considered  an  artistic  suc- 
cess, and  its  expenses  were  met  by  the 
door  receipts,  supplemented  by  the  an- 
nual dues  of  ten  dollars  exacted  from  each 
member  of  the  Society.  This  was  the  fi- 
nancial experience  of  the  whole  twenty- 
seven  years  of  the  Society's  existence,  no 
exhibition,  so  far  as  I  remember,  meet- 
ing its  expenses  from  attendance  or  com- 
missions on  the  sale  of  pictures  and  cat- 
alogues, and  each  deficit  being  covered 
year  after  year  by  the  members'  annual 
dues.  This  welcome  aid  from  members' 
dues  the  Academy  has  not  inherited,  in 
taking  over  other  duties  and  benefits, 
from  the  Society — but  the  work  goes  on 
cheerfully,  nevertheless,  and  will  until  the 
day  when  the  artists  can  control  an  ex- 
hibition as  comprehensive  of  our  effort 
as  the  Royal  Academy  in  London  and  the 

[211] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

Salon  in  Paris  are  of  their  respective 
countries,  where  the  door  receipts  largely 
exceed  the  cost  of  maintaining  the  exhi- 
bition. 

In  my  personal  experiences  I  found 
many  changes  and  some  disappointments. 
In  no  part  of  the  world  can  one  go  away 
even  for  a  year  with  a  greater  certainty 
that  his  place  will  be  filled,  and  his 
absence  hardly  noted,  than  in  our  coun- 
try. The  current  sweeps  on,  no  one  seems 
to  be  really  essential  in  the  flux  and  reflux 
of  our  tide  of  life,  and  the  chances  of  sub- 
mersion, to  even  the  strongest  swimmer, 
are  measurably  great  unless  he  breasts 
the  flood  without  missing  a  stroke. 

To  a  youth  who  had  been  absent  five 
years  and  then  returned,  his  heart  upon 
his  sleeve,  expecting  to  find  old  comrades 
unchanged  and  the  conditions  of  life 
similar  to  those  he  had  left,  the  realities 
that  he  found  were  sufficiently  discon- 
certing. The  very  streets  were  different. 

[212] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

New  York  had  continued  to  move  up- 
town, as  I  suppose  it  had  begun  to  do 
before  I  knew  it,  and  the  haunts  of  my 
earlier  years  had  changed  beyond  recog- 
nition, as  no  doubt  on  my  part  I  too  had 
changed.  In  common  with  others  who  had 
shared  my  pleasant  exile  in  France,  I 
presume  that  I  was  a  trifle  homesick  for 
the  conditions  of  life  across  the  water, 
despite  the  growing  pride  that  I  felt  to 
be  a  part  of  the  activity  of  our  new 
Society  and  the  hope  that  it  would  be, 
as  it  eventually  became,  influential  in 
the  betterment  of  our  art  at  home. 

But  by  far  the  most  disconcerting  con- 
dition that  I  met  was  the  fact  that,  having 
spent  these  five  years  in  acquiring  some 
notion  of  the  art  of  painting,  there  was  not 
the  slightest  discoverable  desire  on  the 
part  of  my  compatriots  to  encourage  me 
to  paint,  nor  even  permit  me  to  do  so,  by 
purchasing  my  work.  In  this  I  shared  the 
misfortune  of  my  comrades  newly  re- 

[213] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

turned  from  abroad  like  myself.  In  the 
Academy  some  of  the  older  men  kept, 
and  kept  to  themselves,  a  certain  clientele 
who  purchased  their  works,  though  the 
sales  in  their  exhibitions  had  already  fallen 
off  considerably  from  the  handsome  sums 
realised  in  the  years  immediately  following 
the  Civil  War. 

In  addition,  the  picture  dealers  found 
a  ready  sale  for  foreign  works  of  art,  for 
it  was  then  and  for  a  few  years  after  that 
the  market  for  contemporaneous  work, 
especially  by  French  artists,  was  at  its 
best,  and  I  heard  from  French  friends 
in  Paris  of  their  extreme  contentment 
at  the  flood  of  Yankee  dollars  which 
flowed  in  their  direction.  It  was  during 
these  years  that  so  many  French  painters 
built  handsome  little  private  hotels  and 
studios,  in  which  they  entertained  delight- 
fully American  millionaires  sojourning  in 
Paris,  who  paid  royally  for  the  entertain- 
ment, until,  the  millionaire  being  a  fickle 

[214] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

person  at  the  best,  in  these  later  years  his 
taste  has  been  educated  to  the  apprecia- 
tion of  the  Old  Masters — of  which  the 
modern  dealer  commands  an  apparently 
inexhaustible  store. 

But  in  the  Society  exhibitions  it  was 
notorious  that  no  one  sold  anything;  we 
were  popularly  supposed  to  be  produc- 
ing art  for  art's  sake,  and  we  were  left 
severely  alone  to  that  delightful  occupa- 
tion. Purchasing  art  for  art's  sake  had 
not  then  dawned  on  the  horizon  of  pos- 
sibility— if  indeed  to-day  it  may  be  said 
to  be  a  general  practice. 

From  much  that  I  have  already  said  it 
will  appear  that  I  am  a  firm  believer  in 
the  work  of  art  as  an  article  of  commerce. 
Not  in  so  far  as  regards  its  production, 
for  there  it  is  and  should  remain  the  one 
great  paradoxical  effort  of  man — an  object 
fashioned  by  his  skill,  of  which  the  joy  of 
the  making  must  so  far  reward  the  labour 
of  its  maker  that  in  its  production  he  has 

[215] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

no  thought  of  the  price  accorded  or  de- 
sired. But  like  all  other  work  of  the  human 
hand,  once  produced  it  becomes  an  object 
that  has  a  price,  and  the  artist  may  be 
properly  solicitous  that  its  value  should 
be  considered  sufficient  to  afford  him  the 
means  of  existence;  for  this  is  a  matter 
of  elementary  common-sense,  of  which 
quality  our  craft  is  in  no  respect  defi- 
cient. 

There  are  many  good  and  substantial 
reasons,  however,  why  it  would  be  prefer- 
able that  the  artist  should  not  be  actively 
engaged  in  vending  his  wares,  the  greatest 
of  these  being  that  his  product  is  so  much 
a  part  of  his  personality  that  he  is  placed 
in  a  somewhat  perilous  position  for  his 
dignity  as  a  man,  if  he  uses  his  native 
intelligence  in  the  game  of  barter  and 
sale.  Hence  the  desirability  of  having 
dealers  in  works  of  art  who  can  act  as 
intermediaries  between  the  producer  and 
the  consumer,  as  in  all  other  branches 

[216] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

of  commerce,  or  the  practice  of  exposing 
works  for  sale  in  our  exhibitions;  which 
thus  serve  a  double  purpose  by  affording 
an  opportunity  for  the  practitioner  and 
his  public  to  judge  the  merit  of  his  work 
by  comparison  with  that  of  others  of  his 
craft,  and  a  market  for  the  disposal  of 
his  product. 

We  have  the  dealers  and  we  have  the 
exhibitions,  but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that 
these  agencies  act  in  a  satisfactory  or  even 
logical  manner.  In  the  earlier  days  of 
our  craft  there  were  guilds  of  artists,  en- 
dowed with  authority,  under  which  young 
apprentices  worked  in  the  acquisition 
of  skill  until  such  time  as  they  felt  that 
they  had  attained  a  certain  mastery. 
Then  they  submitted  a  specimen  of  their 
work  to  the  council  of  the  guild,  who, 
if  it  was  found  worthy,  liberated  them 
from  their  apprenticeship  and  declared 
them  accepted  workmen  upon  the  merit 
of  their  "masterpiece" — a  word  which 

[217] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

has  since  been  distorted  from  this  early 
and  primary  signification. 

This  fixed  the  rank  of  the  producer  and 
his  work  at  once  acquired  a  marketable 
value,  greater  or  less  undoubtedly  as  his 
product  pleased  the  consumer  of  the  time, 
the  prototype  of  the  collector,  connoisseur, 
or  the  simple  amateur  of  our  day.  Our 
modern  habit  has  become  far  less  definite 
than  this.  Acceptance  in  the  Salon  is 
taken  in  Paris  as  a  substitute  for  the  de- 
cision of  a  guild  to  some  extent,  and  its 
catalogue  is  at  once  referred  to  by  the 
dealer  when  an  unknown  man  presents  his 
work  to  him  for  sale,  to  verify  the  new- 
comer's claim  to  that  honour. 

Here  we  have  no  exhibition  whose  ver- 
dict would  establish  definite  distinction 
between  the  aspiring  student  and  the  ac- 
cepted artist.  Indeed  I  know  an  instance 
where  one  of  our  greatest  painters  was 
waited  upon  by  a  young  artist  who  de- 
sired to  become  his  assistant  in  some  im- 

[218] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

portant  decorative  work.  To  show  his 
fitness  for  the  employ,  the  younger  man 
had  brought  a  number  of  specimens  of 
his  work,  and  of  one  of  these  he  remarked, 
with  justifiable  pride,  that  it  had  been  ac- 
cepted and  hung  in  the  exhibition  of  the 
Society  of  American  Artists  the  year  be- 
fore. "Yes,  I  remember  it  very  well," 
answered  the  master,  with  whimsical  sad- 
ness, "the  jury  threw  out  my  contribu- 
tion that  year." 

With  so  inchoate  a  standard  as  this, 
which  denies  years  of  competent  and  ap- 
plauded production,  and  temporarily  lifts 
to  notoriety  some  novel  work  by  a  new- 
comer, who  may  or  may  not  maintain 
the  position  thus  accorded  (this  being  a 
not  uncommon  practice  of  our  juries  of 
selection  during  the  exercise  of  their  brief 
authority),  it  is  evident  that  even  to-day 
we  have  no  real  and  authoritative  means 
of  fixing  the  definite  position  of  the  artist. 

In   the   days   of   which   I   speak  there 

[219] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

was  even  less.  We,  the  home-comers  of 
1877  and  the  few  succeeding  years,  were 
trained  in  our  craft  as  very  few  of  the 
practising  and  accepted  artists  of  the 
time  were  educated.  We  were  still  stu- 
dents in  a  certain  sense, — as  I  hope  we 
have  remained  and  shall  remain  to  our 
dying  day, — but  we  were  capable  of  more 
than  holding  our  own  with  many  of  our 
former  comrades,  who,  during  the  period 
that  we,  strangers  in  our  own  land,  had 
passed  abroad  acquiring  the  rudiments 
of  our  art,  had  stayed  in  New  York  and 
by  local  authority  were  considered  full- 
fledged  and  acceptable  artists.  Naturally 
we  were  met  on  all  sides  by  the  hack 
criticism  that  we  had  lost  something  of 
the  pristine  glory  of  our  native  originality 
by  going  to  acquire  definite  technical 
ability  in  the  art  of  painting  in  foreign 
schools — where  alone  it  was  well  taught 
in  those  days.  There  were  curious  con- 
tradictions in  this  reception  accorded  to 

[220] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

us  foreign-bred  youths,  and  I  remember 
one  of  my  comrades  remarking,  "So  and 
so  is  loud  in  blaming  us  for  studying  in 
Europe,  but  I  notice  that  he  is  always  ready 
to  help  himself  to  a  free-lunch  of  some  of 
the  knowledge  we  have  brought  back." 

Thus  it  appeared  for  a  number  of  years 
that  our  new  insight  and  our  comparative 
skill  in  painting  was  a  drug  in  the  home 
market.  The  collector  of  American  art 
had  not  then  shown  signs  of  life,  though 
he  has  grown  and  grown  in  numbers, 
most  fortunately,  in  the  subsequent  dec- 
ades, and  the  picture  dealer  was  busy  in 
purveying  to  the  demand  for  foreign 
works.  In  this  respect  also  there  is  a 
change  for  the  better  which  has  seen  the 
establishment  of  dealers  of  American  birth 
and  sympathies  and  a  consequent  adop- 
tion of  their  methods  by  dealers  of  for- 
eign birth. 

It  must  be  understood  that  when  I  speak 
of  dealers  it  is  with  no  sense  of  blam- 

[221] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ing  these  gentlemen  for  their  commercial 
estimate  of  art.  This  is  quite  as  it  should 
be.  They  are  simply  men  of  taste  who 
have  invested  a  capital  in  support  of  their 
judgment,  and  who  are  justified  in  mak- 
ing, as  indeed  they  are  obliged  to  make, 
this  investment  as  fruitful  of  results  as  is 
possible.  Like  art  itself,  the  commerce  in 
works  of  art  is  subject  to  no  fixed  stand- 
ard and  their  methods  are  necessarily 
arbitrary  and  fluctuate  according  to  new 
conditions  as  they  may  arise.  For  a  period, 
when  at  last  they  found  it  advantageous 
to  deal  in  American  works,  the  presence 
of  the  producer  upon  the  scene  of  their 
commerce  in  his  product  was  thought  to 
be  detrimental,  for  what  reason  I  know 
not. 

But  I  know  of  an  instance  of  one  of  our 
painters  of  long  residence  in  Paris  who 
during  his  sojourn  there  was  able  to  count 
upon  the  purchase  of  two  or  three  of  his 
works  annually,  which  were  selected  by  a 

[222] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

New  York  dealer  on  the  occasion  of  his 
yearly  visits  to  his  Paris  studio.  Meeting 
this  dealer  one  day  in  the  streets  of  that 
city,  the  painter  was  told  that  in  a  few 
days  a  visit  for  the  purpose  of  selecting 
some  of  his  work  was  proposed.  "You 
must  hurry,"  my  friend  remarked,  "for 
I  am  packing  my  things  to  go  home." 
"On  a  visit  to  America?"  inquired  the 
dealer.  "No,  to  settle  there."  "Indeed, 
well  in  that  case  I  had  better  wait  and 
come  to  your  studio  in  New  York,"  was 
the  dealer's  decision.  My  friend  adds  that 
from  that  day  to  this  the  dealer  in  ques- 
tion has  never  made  the  promised  visit, 
and  has  never  purchased  another  of  his 
works. 

An  incident  like  this  may  pass  as  one 
of  the  mysteries  of  the  picture  trade, 
which,  as  I  have  before  remarked,  has 
little  to  do  with  art  in  the  sense  that  the 
artist  best  likes  to  consider  his  craft. 
But  it  is  a  not  uncommon  error  upon  the 

[223] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

part  of  the  artist  to  deplore  the  immense 
profits  that  the  dealer  is  supposed  to 
make  at  the  expense  of  the  producer  of  the 
wares  in  which  he  traffics.  Granting  that 
such  reports  may  not  be  grossly  exagger- 
ated, the  artist  has  no  right  to  complain 
if  the  dealer  can  find  a  market  which 
leaves  him  no  matter  what  margin  of 
profit.  It  is  the  dealer's  business  to  do 
so  if  possible,  and  such  demand  for  his 
works  indirectly  profits  the  artist  in  giv- 
ing him  freedom  to  produce;  which  in 
turn  is  his  sole  business,  so  long  as  he  can 
exact  a  living  wage  for  his  production. 
Consequently  that  artist  is  fortunate  who 
through  his  relations  with  a  dealer  is  en- 
abled to  carry  on  his  work  with  no  other 
preoccupation  than  to  do  the  best  of  which 
he  is  capable,  and  he  is  even  more  fort- 
unate if  the  dealer  can  realise  a  hundred 
per  cent,  upon  his  investment,  for  it  will 
mean  greater  liberty  of  longer  duration 
for  his  best  effort. 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

Any  one  of  these  pilgrims  of  art,  from 
whose  early  career  I  continually  digress, 
would  have  gladly  welcomed  a  dealer  in 
those  days,  but  these  shy  gentlemen  never 
appeared  and  we  were  driven  to  many  ex- 
pedients to  secure  a  foothold  in  our  native 
land. 

Retrospect  is  far  easier  than  foresight, 
but  in  looking  back  and  considering,  as 
I  am  endeavouring  to  do,  the  practical 
questions  of  an  artist's  existence  then  and 
now,  it  seems  to  me  that  there  were  many 
who  were  short-sighted  in  those  early 
days.  From  this  practical  point  of  view 
it  is  regrettable,  both  for  the  artist  and 
the  possible  purchaser,  that  our  exhibi- 
tions were  devoid  of  financial  result.  The 
attendance  at  the  exhibitions  of  the  Soci- 
ety of  American  Artists  was  sparse,  but 
still  there  were  a  certain  number  of  peo- 
ple who  came,  and  these  were  presuma- 
bly drawn  from  a  class  that  professed  an 
interest  in  art.  I  can  hardly  claim  that 

[225] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

those  of  the  artists  who  have  survived 
from  the  date  of  the  foundation  of  the 
Society  have  seen  such  great  apprecia- 
tion in  the  value  of  their  work  as  to  make 
speculation  in  their  early  productions  one 
that  would  bring  more  than  a  hundred 
per  cent,  of  profit  to-day.  But  there  are 
others  more  fortunately  situated,  from  the 
accepted  point  of  view  that  an  artist's 
reputation  is  never  really  established  dur- 
ing his  lifetime.  We  have  had  to  deplore 
the  death  of  several  of  the  men  active 
in  the  pioneer  effort  of  the  Society,  and 
the  work  that  they  left  has  risen  very 
greatly  in  value. 

It  is  curious  to  note  in  the  catalogue 
of  the  first  exhibition  of  the  Society  of 
American  Artists  in  1878  the  prices  of  the 
works  by  some  of  these  men  as  printed 
therein.  An  Inness  at  three  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars  or  a  Wyant  for  two 
hundred  and  fifty  would  not  blush  un- 
seen by  our  collectors  of  to-day! 

[226] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

Homer  Martin's  work  is  a  notable  in- 
stance of  this  appreciation,  certain  pict- 
ures of  his  now  selling  for  more  thou- 
sands than  the  painter  during  his  lifetime 
demanded,  often  unavailingly,  hundreds. 
A  little  picture  of  which  I  am  the  fortu- 
nate possessor,  one  of  the  first  contribu- 
tions of  Theodore  Robinson  to  our  Society 
exhibition,  still  bears  marked  plainly  on 
the  back  of  the  frame  the  mention  of  its 
price  of  seventy-five  dollars.  No  one  in 
those  days  cared  enough  for  the  picture  or 
was  wise  enough  for  the  investment  to  pay 
this  modest  price,  and  my  friend  gave  it 
to  me  long  ago,  but  to-day  our  collectors 
are  eager  for  pictures  from  his  brush. 

I  know,  in  fact,  few  better  examples  of 
the  manner  in  which  an  artist's  reputation 
among  his  fellows  has  little  reflex  action 
upon  the  collectors  or  purchasers  of  works 
of  art  than  is  shown  by  the  career  of 
Theodore  Robinson.  During  all  his  too 
short  life,  he  received  the  continued  ap- 

[227] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

probation  of  his  craft,  and  such  honours 
as  we  can  award  in  our  exhibitions  fell 
to  his  lot,  while  some  of  us  who  had  the 
means  of  approaching  our  few  collectors 
of  American  art  were  loud  in  praise  of  his 
work  and  insistent  that  it  should  be  pur- 
chased. All  without  avail,  and  had  not 
Robinson  been  endowed  with  a  Spartan 
spirit,  contenting  himself  with  little  so 
long  as  he  was  permitted  to  paint,  and 
extreme  frugality,  with  which  he  eked  out 
his  modest  resources  to  that  end,  he  would 
not  only  have  suffered  extreme  hardship, 
but  his  effort  would  have  become  para- 
lysed through  non-success.  It  sufficed  that 
he  should  die  to  make  his  work  appreci- 
ated; but  as  its  qualities  had  long  been 
recognised  by  his  fellow  painters,  it  would 
seem  as  though  some  ray  of  their  en- 
lightenment might  have  penetrated  the 
intelligence  of  a  larger  public,  and  by 
needed  encouragement  have  stimulated 
the  production  of  the  gifted  painter. 

[228] 


I 

•3 

a 
o 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

The  slightest  frequentation  with  artists 
would  enlighten  any  lover  of  art  as  to 
the  men  who  are  considered  as  possessing 
merit  in  their  work  by  the  general  consen- 
sus of  their  craft,  and  it  would  be  easy  for 
such  a  lover  of  art,  even  if  possessed  of 
only  moderate  means,  to  form  a  collection 
of  good  work  by  men  of  promise.  Our  ex- 
hibitions show  many  such  works  which 
their  young  producers  would  be  glad  to 
sell  for  small  sums,  and  such  examples 
would  from  the  first  give  pleasure  from 
their  possession  and  in  the  end  might 
prove  very  fortunate  investments  for  their 
purchasers. 

As  it  is,  the  formation  of  a  collection 
or  the  acquisition  of  a  single  picture  is 
regarded  by  us  as  a  luxury  reserved  for 
the  very  rich.  In  fact  it  is  quite  within 
the  means  of  the  average  well-to-do  citi- 
zen to  own  distinctive  and  original  works 
of  art,  whose  sale  would  encourage  the 
young  artist  and  enable  him  to  add  to 

[229] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  value  of  the  work  thus  sold  by  ad- 
vancing, through  further  production,  the 
day  when  his  former  patron  would  awake 
to  discover  how  lucky  he  had  been  to 
discern  early  merit. 

Naturally,  it  had  appeared  to  me  that 
as  I  had  been  able  to  earn  my  living  in 
New  York  five  years  before,  the  task 
would  be  easier  with  the  added  capacity 
which  my  study  had  given  me  when  I 
returned  there  at  the  end  of  that  period. 
But  such  was  not  the  case,  and  the  devo- 
tion of  my  effort  to  painting  had  more- 
over made  it  difficult  to  resume  the  prac- 
tice of  illustration,  though  in  one  sense 
the  way  had  been  made  easier,  for  the 
illustrators  no  longer  drew  upon  wood. 
Photography  had  intervened  and  the  de- 
signs made  in  any  medium  were  thus  trans- 
ferred to  the  wood  and  then  engraved; 
for  the  half-tone,  which  in  turn  destroyed 
the  art  of  wood  engraving  and  is  now 
universally  used,  was  then  unknown. 

[230] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

I  found  some  little  illustration  to  do, 
but  for  some  reason  I  could  not  convince 
the  art  editors  that  I  was  best  fitted  to  do 
work  of  an  imaginative  character,  with 
the  result  that  certain  subjects  were  alloted 
to  me  with  which,  though  I  tried  to  do 
my  best,  I  could  accomplish  but  little. 
Some  of  the  criticisms  which  my  patriotic 
friends  lavished  upon  the  foreign  charac- 
ter of  my  painting  also  struck  home.  I 
knew  that  my  sympathy  with  the  ideals  of 
the  Old  World  was  strong,  but  I  ardently 
desired  to  be  a  good  American,  for  my 
loyalty  to  my  country  and  my  pride  in 
my  birthright  had  never  wavered. 

At  this  juncture  one  of  my  friends  offered 
me  a  commission  to  paint  a  picture,  the 
subject  of  which  was  to  be  chosen  from 
the  works  of  Longfellow  or  Whittier.  This 
fell  in  with  my  mood  of  proving  that  I 
was  as  loyal  as  the  most  loyal  of  my  com- 
patriots, and  I  set  about  to  find  some 
place  in  the  country  which  had  retained 

[231] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

all  the  characteristics  of  an  American  vil- 
lage, unaffected  by  foreign  immigration. 

Such  a  place  I  found  off  the  coast  of  New 
England,  at  Nantucket,  and  thither  I  went 
into  voluntary  exile  to  regain  the  birth- 
right my  friends  had  almost  convinced 
me  I  had  lost  through  my  sojourn  in 
France.  For  two  years  I  stayed  there, 
only  returning  to  New  York  for  one  win- 
ter, supporting  myself  by  illustration,  ex- 
ecuted under  the  most  trying  conditions, 
for  I  could  seldom  obtain  proper  models 
for  the  work  sent  me ;  which,  of  all  things 
in  the  world  to  be  conceived  and  executed 
in  a  New  England  village,  consisted  prin- 
cipally of  subjects  drawn  from  the  Old 
Testament. 

Meanwhile,  during  the  season  when 
painting  could  be  carried  on  out-of-doors, 
during  the  best  part  of  the  two  summers 
of  my  exile,  I  was  at  work  on  my  painting. 
I  had  finally  chosen  a  subject  from  Whit- 
tier,  representing  the  concluding  scene  of 

[232] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

his  ballad  of  "Skipper  Ireson's  Ride." 
This  entailed  a  composition  of  some 
forty  figures,  suitable  types  for  which  I 
found  among  the  people  of  the  town,  and 
the  resulting  picture  was  entirely  painted 
in  the  open  air.  It  was  of  course  by  far 
my  most  ambitious  effort  up  to  that 
time,  and,  to  make  a  long  story  short, 
it  was  finally  finished  and  shown  in  the 
exhibition  of  the  Society  of  American 
Artists  in  1881.  I  had  found  the  isolation 
of  my  life  in  Nantucket  extremely  hard 
to  one  like  myself,  who  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  live  surrounded  by  comrades 
intent  upon  the  same  occupation  as  my 
own,  and  profiting  as  much  as  I  had  by 
the  helpful  criticism  or  encouragement 
which  such  conditions  imply.  When  I  re- 
turned to  New  York,  moreover,  after  this 
long  absence,  I  found,  as  was  but  natural, 
that  in  the  interval  what  notice  had  been 
taken  of  me  as  one  of  the  little  band 
of  painters  who  had  returned  two  years 

[233] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

before  was  quite  forgotten.  The  place  that 
I  might  have  made  for  myself  during  that 
time  had  been  secured  by  others,  for  the 
period  was  one  that  saw  the  return  of 
many  young  painters  from  Europe. 

The  exhibition  of  my  picture  excited  but 
little  interest  in  so  far  as  its  subject  was 
concerned,  for  changes  come  so  quickly 
in  the  convictions  of  our  public  that 
the  number  of  works  either  sent  home 
from  our  artists  abroad  or  brought  back 
by  our  returning  painters  had  apparently 
quite  reconciled  the  former  critics  to  the 
choice  of  themes  of  a  foreign  character. 
Some  little  praise  was  given  to  my  effort 
for  certain  qualities  of  painting,  but  no 
great  patriotic  emotion  seemed  to  be 
stirred  by  it — somewhat  to  my  relief,  to 
tell  the  truth,  for  the  experience  had 
taught  me  a  valuable  lesson.  It  is  never 
worth  while  to  shape  your  efforts  by  the 
dictation  of  others ;  embody  in  your  work 
your  own  aspirations. 

[234] 


It 

00  C/2 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

T^  by  doing  the  work  that  expresses  your 
own  personality  you  can  awaken  the  in- 
terest of  others,  well  and  good.  Your 
success  is  near.  But  if  by  chance  you 
cannot  at  once  elicit  this  response,  turn 
to  other  work  for  your  support  and  do 
it  as  well  as  you  can,  meanwhile  never 
losing  your  hold  upon  the  one  character 
of  work  which  in  your  inmost  heart  you 
know  is  your  own.  Make  every  effort, 
use  all  the  leisure  that  your  bread-winning 
permits  you,  to  carry  on  for  your  proper 
satisfaction  some  such  personal  work,  for 
if  you  are  predestined  to  achieve  success, 
it  will  eventually  be  won  by  the  work 
which  thus  expresses  your  highest  aspira- 
tion, and  by  no  other. 

For  me  at  this  period  of  my  career  there 
came  a  most  fortunate  interval  in  the 
shape  of  employment  as  assistant  in  some 
decorative  work  of  John  La  Farge.  Here 
for  the  first  time  I  found  a  practical 
outlet  for  a  decorative  intent  which  had 

[2351 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

theretofore  found  issue  only  in  various 
schemes  and  sketches,  but  which  had 
never  from  the  first  been  entirely  absent 
from  my  effort.  This  happy  interval  only 
lasted  for  a  year,  however,  for  the  pres- 
ent opportunities  of  mural  painting  had 
not  then  made  more  than  a  rare  oc- 
casional appearance,  and  twelve  years 
were  to  elapse  before  I  was  able  to 
secure  decorative  work  of  my  own.  Once 
more  I  turned  to  illustration,  and  I  am 
more  than  willing  to  forego  the  narration 
of  my  experiences  for  the  next  few  years. 
In  painting  what  little  I  accomplished  I 
tried  to  make  as  significant  as  possible 
of  the  decorative  character  which  I  de- 
sired my  work  to  express,  but  the  neces- 
sities of  life  kept  me  for  the  most  part 
of  my  time  at  work  at  illustration  of  a 
kind  that,  do  my  best,  I  could  not  do 
very  well. 

Yet  it  was  to  be  eventually  illustration 
that  was  to  procure  my  liberation  from 

[236] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

drudgery,  of  which  I  will  only  say  that 
I  hope  none  of  my  younger  brothers  in 
art  may  be  forced  to  endure  anything 
like  it — at  least  for  any  longer  period 
than  I  did. 

It  was  at  the  close  of  1877  that  I  returned 
to  New  York.  It  was  in  the  spring  of 
1885  that  a  publishing  house  proposed 
to  me  that  I  should  undertake  a  small 
illustrated  book,  the  drawings  to  accom- 
pany some  poem  of  my  choice. 

There  was  no  intention  on  the  part  of 
the  publishers  to  produce  more  than  a 
small  Christmas  holiday  book,  of  which 
each  year  at  that  time  it  was  their  custom 
to  bring  out  several.  But  to  me  it  ap- 
peared the  chance  of  my  life.  I  had  some 
difficulty  in  obtaining  my  publisher's  con- 
sent to  my  choice  of  a  poem,  for  with  the 
deliberate  intention  to  submit  to  no  in- 
fluence other  than  a  desire  to  do  what  I 
felt  I  could  do  best,  I  had  taken  one  of 
the  less  well-known  of  the  poems  of  one 

[237] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

of  the  greatest,  but  at  the  same  time  least 
popular,  of  English  poets,  the  "Lamia" 
of  John  Keats. 

Not  long  before  I  had  read  in  a  literary 
journal  a  report  of  the  comparative  sales 
of  a  standard  edition  of  the  poets  pub- 
lished by  an  English  house,  and  the  works 
of  John  Keats  were  at  the  foot  of  the  list, 
with  a  total  sale  of  twenty  copies  in  the 
course  of  the  year.  Eight  months  later  two 
thousand  copies  of  one  of  his  poems  in  an 
expensive  edition,  selling  for  fifteen  dol- 
lars, had  found  a  market,  and  as  I  trust 
that  every  one  who  looked  at  my  draw- 
ings read  "Lamia,"  I  take  no  little  pride 
in  having  been  the  means  of  a  slight  ac- 
cession of  interest  in  the  work  of  this 
great  poet. 

Eight  months  was  the  time  allotted  me 
for  my  work,  time  which  appeared  ample 
to  my  publishers  who  at  the  outset  had 
little  idea  of  the  scope  that  I  proposed  to 
give  to  the  book,  which,  day  by  day,  and 

[238] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

week  by  week,  increased  in  size,  quality 
of  paper,  printing,  and  reproductions  of 
my  drawings,  under  the  arguments  I  ad- 
vanced, backed,  I  venture  to  say,  by  the 
quality  of  my  designs,  which  from  the 
first  took  on  a  character  rather  unusual 
in  book  illustration.  The  drawings  are 
well  enough  known,  and  I  think  I  may 
say  that  nearly  every  one  is  designed 
more  in  the  manner  of  a  decoration  than 
as  an  illustration.  I  endeavoured  to  treat 
all  the  larger  designs  as  though  the  figures 
were  the  size  of  life,  and  knowing  that 
the  method  of  reproduction  would  render 
the  most  delicate  values,  I  tried  in  their 
effect  to  give  each  drawing  the  character 
of  a  painting,  lacking  only  the  colour.  I 
worked  through  the  summer  months  lit- 
erally night  and  day,  having  two  superb 
models,  a  man  and  a  woman,  engaged  per- 
manently, using  one  and  then  the  other 
as  necessity  arose  during  the  daylight 
hours,  and  working  on  the  backgrounds 

[239] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

and  accessories  by  the  artificial  light  of 
night.  More  than  once  I  worked  all 
night.  It  is  not  the  method  of  work  that 
I  should  recommend,  but  necessity  drove, 
and  when  a  man  finds  his  chance  he 
must  let  nothing  stand  in  his  way  to 
prevent  its  accomplishment. 

Though  long  before  the  end  I  had  in- 
duced my  publishers  to  share  a  large  part 
of  my  enthusiasm,  I  felt  the  responsibility 
of  having  persuaded  them  to  embark  in 
an  enterprise  far  more  hazardous  and  de- 
manding a  much  greater  outlay  of  capital 
than  they  had  originally  intended.  But  I 
was  determined  to  "make  good," and  from 
some  indications  that  cheered  me  on  the 
way,  I  was  encouraged  to  believe  I  should. 

At  last,  shortly  before  Christmas,  a  fin- 
ished copy  of  the  book  was  sent  me,  the 
margins,  the  type,  the  decorations  in  the 
text,  the  larger  and  smaller  figure  draw- 
ings, the  cover  design,  every  smallest  detail 
of  my  choice  and  the  work  of  my  hands. 

[240] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

The  reception  of  the  work  was  more 
favourable  than  I  had  dared  hope.  Now 
that  the  original  drawings  have  found  a 
permanent  home  and  are  superbly  dis- 
played in  the  Chicago  Art  Institute,  I 
can  after  these  many  years  look  on  them 
with  something  of  the  critical  spirit  with 
which  I  could  look  on  another's  work. 
I  can  regard  them  as  an  incident  in  the 
life  of  a  young  artist  who  had  followed 
many  false  routes,  who  had  met  with  little 
encouragejnent,  who  had  been  despaired 
of  by  others,  though  at  the  worst  he  had 
kept  alive  some  small  faith  in  himself,  and 
at  last,  taking,  as  the  French  say,  his  cour- 
age in  both  hands,  had  made  an  effort  to 
break  the  bonds  in  which  circumstance, 
partially  created  by  his  own  mistakes,  had 
enmeshed  him. 

Such  success  as  it  was,  was  chiefly  due 
to  the  lesson  learned  from  experience 
that  it  is  useless  to  seek  definite  expres- 
sion along  the  route  of  another's  choosing. 

[241] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

I  had  the  courage  to  risk  being  unpopu- 
lar, to  link  my  fortunes  with  an  unread 
poet,  to  take  a  subject  that  presumably 
few  would  care  for,  but  from  the  inherent 
truth  of  the  old  fable  that  is  as  new  to- 
day as  it  was  in  the  early  morn  of  Greece, 
that  tells  of  life,  love,  and  death  which  are 
still  as  near  us  as  they  were  in  the  dawn 
of  time,  I  was  able  to  express  some  parti- 
cle of  this  essential  human  problem  in 
such  wise  that  my  little  world  stood  still 
for  a  moment  to  give  me  a  hearing. 

I  have  ventured  to  be  explicit,  and 
possibly  a  trifle  vainglorious,  over  this 
first  success,  that  gave  me  some  measure 
of  freedom  to  express  my  little  message 
to  the  world.  My  liberation  had  come 
to  me  in  my  thirty-third  year,  when  I 
had  nearly  doubled  the  age  that  I  had 
when  I  began  my  independent  career. 
It  was  a  long  time  for  one  whose  every 
waking  hour  had  been  unceasingly  de- 
voted to  his  art,  but  I  am  convinced  that 

[242] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

many  more  years  would  have  passed 
before  I  should  have  struggled  out  of  the 
slough  of  despond — if,  indeed,  I  had  ever 
succeeded  in  freeing  myself — had  I  not 
determined  to  do  my  own  work  in  my 
own  way.  That  way  fortunately  is  open 
to  every  one;  it  only  demands  a  little  in- 
dependence of  spirit,  a  careful  weighing 
of  the  quality  with  which  each  one  of  us 
is  born  that  differs  from  the  quality  of 
others.  It  is  a  very  old  counsellor  that 
commands  each  of  us,  "Know  thyself," 
but  we  are  so  constituted  that  the  easy 
way  tempts  us  to  follow  in  the  beaten 
track,  to  become  one  of  a  herd  and  to 
lose  our  identity  in  the  dust  that  rises 
along  the  route  where  it  passes. 
There  are  few  great  successes  in  art, 
but  there  are  many  small  ones.  To  these 
last  we  may  pretend,  if  only  we  dare  to 
be  individual,  and  the  smallest  of  these 
serve  to  make  up  the  sum  of  art.  The 
work  of  the  individual  coral  insect  is 

[243] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

almost  microscopic,  but  the  work  of  many 
rears  the  curiously  fashioned  reef  against 
which  the  wave  of  ocean  beats  in  vain. 
So  the  history  of  art  is  filled  with  islets 
reared  above  the  waves  of  oblivion, 
wrought  by  men  who  laboured  in  the  joy 
of  their  art — and  sometimes  builded  bet- 
ter than  they  knew.  There  is  an  artist  of 
whom  until  a  few  years  ago  not  very 
many  knew,  and  of  his  life  and  history 
comparatively  little  is  known  even  now. 
He  lived  and  worked  in  a  little  town  in 
Holland,  from  which  circumstance  we 
know  him  as  Ver  Meer  of  Delft.  His 
work  is  as  modest  in  its  dimensions  as 
his  subjects  are  modest  in  their  pretense. 
A  woman  clasping  around  her  neck  a 
necklace  before  a  mirror,  a  woman,  plain 
of  feature,  in  surroundings  that  are  sim- 
ple, is  one  of  these — a  most  beautiful 
picture  in  the  Berlin  Museum.  Equally 
simple  are  the  subjects  of  the  few  pictures 
by  him,  about  thirty  in  number,  that 

[244] 


The  Pearl  Necklace,"  by  Ver  Meer  of  Delft,  in  the 
Berlin  Museum 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

are  known.  In  each  there  is  some  magic 
in  the  lighting,  some  integrity  of  work- 
manship, some  expression  of  the  love  of 
truth,  that  lifts  these  little  panels  from 
the  realm  of  the  commonplace  to  that  of 
great  and  unusual  achievement.  But  if  the 
achievement  is  unusual,  the  materials  re- 
main commonplace,  and,  given  capacity 
equivalent  to,  though  different  from,  that 
of  Ver  Meer,  there  is  no  reason  why  you 
or  I  should  not,  from  the  world  about  us, 
or  from  some  fancy  of  the  brain,  express 
an  equally  individual,  though  again  dif- 
ferent, message  to  the  world.  "A  message 
to  the  world"  seems  a  pompous  phrase, 
but  I  find  no  other,  for  to  leave  behind 
us  in  our  passage  through  life  no  matter 
how  little  evidence  of  our  effort,  is  a  com- 
munication established  with  our  kind  and 
a  message  to  posterity. 

Ver  Meer  did  not  consciously  do  more, 
for  he  could  not  know  as  he  painted  the 
simple  subjects  which  pleased  him,  with 

[245] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

no  other  thought  than  to  make  each  work 
as  perfect  as  his  skill  permitted,  that 
three  hundred  years  after  his  death,  in  our 
twentieth  century,  the  museums  of  the 
world  would  struggle  for  the  possession 
of  his  few  pictures. 

There  are  few  greater  obstacles  spread 
in  the  path  of  the  young  artist,  however, 
than  the  difficulty  of  discovering,  among 
the  many  tempting  vistas  that  radiate 
from  the  straight  and  narrow  way  of  his 
native  and  natural  expression,  the  one 
thing  that  he  is  best  fitted  to  do.  As  I 
have  already  said,  the  modern  artist  is 
the  heir  of  the  ages,  and  the  wealth  of 
past  effort  which  is  familiar  to  him  con- 
stitutes an  embarrassment  of  riches  among 
which  it  is  difficult  to  pick  and  choose. 
The  earlier  men  who  have  created  this 
vast  store  were  not  subject  to  this  distract- 
ing influence,  and  they  were  less  diverted 
than  are  the  modern  men  by  all  that  had 
been  done  by  others.  It  is  difficult  for  the 

[246] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

modern  painter  to  accept  and  follow  the 
dictum  of  Kipling,  and, 

"  Each  in  his  separate  star,  draw  the  thing  as 

he  sees  it, 
For  the  god  of  things  as  they  are." 

This  difficulty  is  increased  by  an  equal 
variety  in  our  modern  influences.  To  any- 
one who  has  been  a  witness  to  the  con- 
flicting efforts  of  the  past  thirty  years, 
however,  it  seems  evident  that  the  men 
who  have  been  true  to  their  own  convic- 
tions are  those  who  have  succeeded. 
They  have  gone  on  in  their  own  quiet 
way,  not  incurious  of  the  work  which  has 
been  done  by  others,  watching  the  growth 
of  this  movement,  its  acceptance  or  its 
decline,  the  uprising  of  another  influence, 
each  of  these  in  turn  heralded  as  the  ulti- 
mate solution  of  the  problem  of  modern 
art.  From  all  these  various  and  chang- 
ing influences  they  have  perhaps  added 
something  to  their  own  store  of  expres- 

[247] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

sion,  but  in  the  main  they  have  remained 
true  to  the  principles  they  first  adopted, 
true  to  themselves,  true  to  the  effort  of 
expressing  their  best  thought  in  the  ver- 
nacular of  their  own  individuality. 

It  has  fallen  to  my  lot,  since  those  early 
days  I  have  endeavoured  to  describe,  to 
be  a  witness  to  our  endeavour  at  home 
as  I  have  been  to  much  of  the  effort 
abroad.  I  can  recall,  here  and  in  Europe, 
hundreds  of  men  gifted  at  the  outset 
of  their  career  in  art  with  almost  as 
many  varieties  of  expression  and  tempera- 
ment. As  time  has  gone  on,  many  of  these 
men  have  succumbed  to  the  temptations 
of  popular  applause  and  temporary  suc- 
cess. They  have  trimmed  their  effort  to 
every  varying  wind  that  promised  to  land 
them  in  some  haven  of  immediate  suc- 
cess, havens  whose  land-locked  harbours 
were  preceded  by  dangerous  shoals  on 
which  many  of  them  have  foundered. 

But  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic  there 

[248] 


THIRTY  YEARS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

have  been  a  score  or  more  who  have 
watched  the  compass  left  for  their  guid- 
ance by  preceding  navigators;  they  have 
not  failed  to  consult  the  latest  charts  to 
which  contemporary  exploration  has  add- 
ed new  landmarks;  but  above  all  they 
have  kept  the  watches  day  and  night, 
their  hands  upon  the  rudder  as,  avoiding 
shoals  and  reefs,  they  have  steered  the 
bark  of  their  endeavour  safe  to  port. 

To  conclude,  permit  me  to  drop  meta- 
phor and  repeat  in  simplest  language  the 
moral  of  this  long  discourse. 

The  way  has  been  made  easy  to  techni- 
cal proficiency.  Here  in  schools  now  es- 
tablished you  can  attain  the  skill  of  your 
craft  by  the  means  provided,  if  you  are  de- 
cently industrious,  more  completely  than 
was  possible  anywhere  in  this  country 
thirty  years  ago.  Take  and  take  freely  all 
the  knowledge  that  the  study  of  nature, 
your  instructors'  precepts,  or  the  obser- 
vation of  your  comrades'  work  in  solv- 

[249] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ing  your  common  technical  problems  will 
give  you.  But  remember  that  this  is  but 
the  beginning.  Here  you  may  learn  how 
to  paint;  what  to  paint  is  the  question 
which  you,  and  you  alone,  can  answer. 
There  you  must  look  into  your  heart  and, 
once  again,  draw  the  thing  as  you  see 
it,  for  the  God  of  Things  as  They  Are. 


[250] 


VI 

OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR 
FUTURE 

WHEN  the  White  City  was  built  in  1893 
art  assumed  a  definite  place  in  our  na- 
tional life.  Then  for  the  first  time  we 
awoke  to  a  realisation  that  art  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people  had 
come  to  us.  It  came  to  this  New  World  of 
ours  in  the  old  historic  way.  From  the 
seed  sown  in  the  Orient,  through  Greece, 
through  Italy  from  Byzantium,  wafted 
ever  westward,  its  timid  flowering  from 
our  Atlantic  seaboard  had  been  carried  a 
thousand  miles  inland  to  find  its  first 
full  eclosion;  not  as  a  single  growth,  but 
as  the  triple  flower  of  architecture,  paint- 
ing, and  sculpture. 

[251] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

And,  as  always,  it  fulfilled  its  mission  of 
mind  over  matter.  It  was  a  foregone  con- 
clusion that  the  Columbian  Exposition 
would  show  triumphantly  our  material 
power,  would  demonstrate  the  potential- 
ity of  our  commerce,  our  agriculture,  and 
our  mechanical  arts.  Nor  in  the  event 
were  these  lacking,  but  the  millions  who 
came  to  the  exposition  carried  away  as 
the  one  chief  impression,  as  its  most  po- 
tent appeal,  that  of  the  triumph  of  art. 
From  that  day  art  has  carried  a  new 
message  to  our  people;  since  that  day  it 
has  stood  erect,  has  added  to  its  stature, 
and  now,  still  in  its  youth,  it  takes  its 
place,  a  younger  brother,  but  counting 
with  its  elders  in  the  family  of  the  art  of 
the  world. 

Those  who  had  watched  the  develop- 
ment of  our  art  effort  with  jealous  eye  had 
already  seen,  at  the  Paris  Exposition  of 
1889,  that  the  progress  for  which  all  had 
hoped,  and  for  which  some  had  worked, 

[252] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

was  marked,  and  then  and  there  our  for- 
eign critics  had  acknowledged  the  prom- 
ise of  our  art.  But  it  was  in  Chicago,  in 
1893,  that  there  was  gathered  for  the  first 
time  a  larger  and  more  comprehensive 
exhibit  of  our  painting  and  sculpture, 
and  there,  in  frank  comparison  with  typi- 
cal collections  of  the  work  of  other  na- 
tions, our  own  more  than  redeemed  that 
promise.  We  showed  that  since  the  Cen- 
tennial Exhibition  in  Philadelphia,  in 
1876,  there  had  been  begun  and  carried 
forward  a  school  whose  technical  equip- 
ment evinced  qualities  that  our  earlier 
artists  had  not  mastered,  while,  if  for  this 
merit  we  were  indebted  to  the  Old  World, 
its  expressional  qualities  were  strongly 
marked  by  the  influence  of  the  New. 

Since  then  in  St.  Louis,  at  the  Louisiana 
Purchase  Exposition  of  1904,  an  even 
larger  and  more  comprehensive  showing 
of  American  work  has  been  had,  and 
this  time  all  forms  of  our  art  were  ex- 

[253] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

hibited,  for  the  applied  arts  were  included. 
Here  again  we  met  in  friendly  rivalry 
our  brothers  of  the  Old  World,  and  again 
the  healthy  and  growing  merit  of  our 
work  was  such  that  we  can  look  forward 
to  our  future  with  assured  certainty  that 
it  is  not  for  a  day  and  a  momentary 
sojourn  that  art  has  travelled  westward. 
Up  to  the  time  of  the  Columbian  Ex- 
position the  whole  signification  of  the 
word  art,  as  understood  by  our  people, 
and  by  many  of  our  artists  as  well,  was 
centred  upon  unrelated  and  independent 
works  of  painting  and  sculpture.  Our 
architects,  it  is  true,  had  already  grown 
in  numbers  and  the  qualities  of  their 
work  had,  under  the  double  stimulus  of 
thorough  training  and  abundant  oppor- 
tunity for  practice,  increasingly  gained 
in  structural  and  decorative  merit.  But 
it  seldom  occurred  to  our  public  to  con- 
sider architecture  as  an  art  or  its  practi- 
tioners as  artists.  It  remained,  therefore, 

[254] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

for  the  triumphal  exposition  of  their 
knowledge  and  inspiration  at  Chicago 
in  1893  to  correct  this  error,  and  restore 
to  the  architect  his  place  as  an  artist,  and 
to  his  work  the  prouder  title  of  mother  of 
the  arts. 

For,  to  all  who  follow  the  arts  and  also 
to  the  general  public,  it  was  not  the  con- 
tents of  the  noble  art  palace  which  the 
genius  of  Charles  Atwood  had  conceived 
— that  still  stands  in  its  partial  ruin  in 
Jackson  Park,  Chicago,  as  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  buildings  in  the  world — 
which  was  the  most  significant  indication 
that  a  greater  phase  of  art  was  disclosed 
to  our  people.  No,  precious  as  were  many 
of  the  exhibits  in  the  art  galleries  and  in 
the  other  buildings  of  the  exposition,  it 
was  not  the  jewels  but  the  casket  which 
contained  them  that  satisfied  the  primor- 
dial hunger  for  beauty  of  all  who  saw 
them — which  has  remained  in  our  mem- 
ory as  a  beautiful  vision  since  that  day. 

[255] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

Nor  was  it  the  architect  alone  to  whom 
was  due  our  grateful  admiration,  though 
to  him  is  due  the  stately  order  of  the 
Court  of  Honour,  the  Peristyle,  and  the 
planning  of  the  whole  marvellous  dream 
come  true.  True  mother  of  the  arts, 
Architecture  had  called  in  to  her  assist- 
ance her  twin  children,  Painting  and 
Sculpture,  and,  working  together  as  they 
never  had  before  in  our  land,  they  had 
produced  a  more  glorious  work  of  art 
than  the  modern  world  has  seen  before 
or  since. 

It  was  this  alliance  of  the  arts  that  was 
new  to  us,  that  opened  before  the  artist  a 
new  field  of  endeavour,  a  larger,  nobler 
employ  than  the  conditions  existing  be- 
fore this  happy  conjunction  had  accorded 
to  his  effort  in  this  country. 

A  nobler  employ,  I  insist,  for  if  we 
pause  to  think  a  moment  we  must  agree 
that  the  production  of  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing has  another  and  more  important  mis- 

[256] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

sion  than  merely  to  give  pleasure,  and  that 
the  artist  scarcely  fulfils  his  mission  who 
only  seeks  to  gratify  some  individual  and 
exacting  taste  that  may  perchance  lower 
his  creative  ideals. 

Here  I  touch  upon  a  delicate  subject 
but  one  that  is  well  worth  consideration, 
if  the  artist  is  to  count  in  the  progressive 
civilisation  of  our  future  as  he  has  counted 
in  the  past  and  is  esteemed  at  present  in 
the  Old  World.  In  the  older  days,  I  may 
be  reminded,  the  artist  was  a  courtier,  and 
even  more  dependent  than  in  modern 
times  upon  the  patronage  of  the  prince  or 
noble  whom  he  or  his  work  served.  This 
is  true,  but  the  older  order  that  existed, 
before  the  French  Revolution  shook  the 
foundation  of  class  privilege  from  its 
base,  took  into  account  the  necessity  of 
the  existence  of  a  certain  number  of 
human  beings,  who  were  exempted  from 
the  ruder  material  labour  of  mankind, 
but  who  worked  no  less  than  they  for 

[257] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  benefit  of  the  privileged  few;  who 
alone  profited  by  the  industry,  material 
or  spiritual,  of  the  vast  majority  of  the 
people.  As  the  craft  of  the  artist  is  sub- 
ject to  his  spiritual  endowment,  its  exer- 
cise is  confined  to  those  privileged  by 
nature  and  thus  they  then  were  recog- 
nised as  a  class  apart,  with  whom  a 
prince  could  consort  without  derogation 
to  his  dignity;  as  Philip  IV  of  Spain,  the 
most  absolute  of  monarchs,  chose  Velas- 
quez as  his  intimate;  as  Rubens  more 
than  once  was  given  ambassadorial  rank 
to  represent  his  country;  as  Charles  V 
stopped  to  pick  up  the  brush  that  Titian 
let  fall,  and  reproved  his  scandalised 
courtiers  by  reminding  them  that  it  was 
within  his  power  to  make  nobles,  but 
God  alone  could  create  a  Titian. 
The  old  order  changing  has  made  every 
man  work ;  no  less  the  constitutional  mon- 
arch of  our  time  than  the  day  labourer 
who  digs  the  trenches  of  our  canals, 

[258] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

lays  the  pipes  of  our  sewers,  or  sweats 
in  building  the  iron  highways  of  our 
railroads.  In  this  revolution  of  man's 
effort,  the  artist  has  suffered.  We  recog- 
nise the  nobility  of  what  we  term  useful 
labour,  but  in  our  modern  view  we  too 
often  relegate  the  effort  of  the  artist  to 
the  sphere  of  luxury.  I  have  already 
quoted  from  another  the  terse  expression 
of  a  fundamental  truth,  to  the  effect  that 
our  average  citizen  can  get  along  "quite 
comfortably"  without  art.  In  point  of  fact 
we  know  that  this  average  citizen  believes 
this  to  be  true,  however  mistaken  he 
may  be  and  how  little  he  may  realise  as 
yet  the  debt  which  he  already  owes  to  the 
sustained  effort  of  the  artist  in  this  coun- 
try. But  in  practice  the  average  citizen 
leaves  to  his  comparatively  few  fellow- 
citizens  who  have  amassed  large  fortunes 
the  entire  recognition  and  encouragement 
of  art.  As  I  have  already  shown,  the 
nations  of  the  continent  of  Europe  rec- 

[259] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

ognise  and  encourage  their  art  by  gov- 
ernmental measures,  not  alone  for  its 
civilising  and  spiritual  effect,  but  for  its 
commercial  utility.  This  method  has  its 
dangers  as  well  as  its  advantages,  but, 
as  it  would  be  neither  desirable  nor  possi- 
ble under  our  Constitution,  it  need  not  be 
considered  here. 

In  this  country,  of  the  comparatively 
few  who,  by  reason  of  their  fortune  and 
their  social  importance,  give  their  time 
or  their  money  to  the  encouragement  of 
art,  there  are  some  whose  intelligence  di- 
rects their  efforts  through  a  realisation 
that  the  highest  efficiency  of  any  civil- 
isation, commercially  or  politically,  has 
never  been  attained  lacking  art.  To  these 
men,  and  their  number  is  increasing  year 
by  year,  all  honour  is  due,  for  they  are 
useful  citizens  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 

But  there  still  remain  a  perhaps  greater 
number  whose  interest  in  art  is  more 
selfish,  who,  after  their  fortune  is  made, 

[260  ] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

purchase  works  of  art  in  much  the  same 
manner  and  from  the  same  motives  as  they 
acquire  yachts  and  motor  cars,  as  they 
build  ostentatious  palaces,  or  join  the 
throng  who  scatter  their  surplus  wealth 
in  the  pursuit  of  mundane  joys  in  all  the 
pleasure  resorts  of  Europe  and  America. 
In  fairness  it  must  be  said  that  occasion- 
ally the  works  of  art  which  this  type  of 
man  has  acquired  have  had  a  saving  grace 
of  influence  upon  his  character,  for  there 
resides  in  a  great  painting  or  statue,  or 
even  in  the  finer  works  of  applied  art, 
a  certain  spiritual  and  refining  efficiency 
that  may  work  wonders  with  a  nature 
that  has  been  almost  exclusively  occupied 
with  the  acquisition  of  material  wealth. 
But  as  a  class  these  are  the  citizens 
whose  influence  upon  the  artist  may  be 
perilous  however  much  his  material  pros- 
perity might  be  enhanced  by  their  fre- 
quentation;  for  in  these  circles  he  is  only 
admitted  at  the  price  of  flattering  the 

[261] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

pride  of  the  possessor  of  wealth,  upon  the 
same  footing  as  those  who  to  vend  their 
wares  are  ready  to  modify  its  quality  to 
any  degree  to  suit  the  whim  of  the  pur- 
chaser. 

Again  I  am  reminded  that  the  artist  must 
live,  and  that  he  would  be  wrong  to  hold 
himself  aloof,  when  his  work  might  ex- 
ercise the  refining  and  civilising  influence 
to  which  I  have  testified,  even  if  he  be  not 
driven  by  necessity  to  dispose  of  his  pro- 
duction as  best  he  may.  But  in  the  end 
the  artist  will  profit,  even  commercially, 
if  he  holds  his  convictions  firmly  and  re- 
fuses to  modify  the  product  of  his  brain  to 
please  a  changing  fashion  or  the  mood  of 
a  moment  which  governs  the  newly  fledged 
amateur  who  no  longer,  perhaps,  is  willing 
to  acknowledge  that  he  knows  nothing 
about  art,  but  retains  his  hold  upon  the 
other  half  of  the  hackneyed  phrase,  and 
is  certain  that  he  knows  what  he  likes. 
Consequently,  if  the  artist  does  not  meet 

[262  ] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

with  instant  and  full  acceptance  of  his  best 
effort,  it  is  better  that  he  should  put  his 
skill  to  some  bread-winning  and  com- 
mercial demand  if  possible,  to  preserve 
the  integrity  of  his  convictions,  and  bide 
his  time. 

In  all  the  various  relations  of  the  artist 
to  the  individual  purchaser,  he  is  subject 
to  thus  modify  his  production,  for  he  is 
necessarily  caught  between  the  upper  and 
nether  millstones;  upon  the  one  hand  he 
must  live  by  his  work,  and  upon  the 
other  his  work  must  meet  or  create  a 
demand.  At  the  best,  therefore,  the  prin- 
ciples above  enumerated  can  only  be  ap- 
plied in  the  measure  to  which  every  hu- 
man endeavour  is  subject;  by  a  series  of 
compromises  that,  keeping  the  end  in 
sight,  aim  to  establish  an  increasingly 
higher  standard  with  each  succeeding 
effort. 

This  is  to  hark  back  once  more  to  the 
days  of  the  Columbian  Exposition,  for  it 
[  263  ] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

was  there  that  was  established  a  new 
outlet  to  the  artist's  endeavour,  one  that 
has  since  then  seen  in  each  succeeding 
year  a  new  mile-stone  added  along  the 
highway  of  progress  toward  this  higher 
standard  which  we  must  strive  unceas- 
ingly to  attain.  It  began  auspiciously 
for  there  was  much  of  nobility  in  the 
universal  agreement  on  the  part  of  each 
individual  connected  with  the  enterprise 
to  consider  it  patriotically,  and  subju- 
gate all  the  prejudices  of  sectional  or  pri- 
vate interest  to  insure  its  success  as  a 
national  effort. 

This  sentiment,  I  may  say  in  passing, 
originated  with  the  capitalists  who  pro- 
vided the  means  for  the  activity  of  those 
who  planned  and  carried  out  the  unri- 
valled exposition  buildings,  but  with  these 
last  it  entailed  greater  sacrifice  perhaps, 
for  they  were  a  band  of  men  gathered  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  where  they  had 
each  worked,  every  man  for  himself,  ar- 

[264] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

chitects,  painters,  and  sculptors,  accord- 
ing to  the  principles  imbibed  from  their 
various  education,  made  stable  by  the  les- 
sons learned  in  their  individual  practice. 
With  such  material  cohesion  of  effort  and 
uniformity  of  aim  might  have  seemed  im- 
possible, but  in  fact  proved  easy,  so  pen- 
etrated were  one  and  all  with  the  desire 
to  make  each  personal  contribution  swell 
the  sum  of  a  harmonious  common  result. 
There  must  have  been  as  well  an  instant 
recompense  of  joy  for  each  subjugation 
of  self,  as  every  worker  recognised  how 
greatly  his  individual  effort  gained  im- 
portance as  an  integral  part  of  the  whole. 
The  men  were  all  inexperienced,  even 
those  of  longest  practice  were  only  authors 
of  isolated  works,  which,  however  im- 
portant, played  no  part  in  a  great  com- 
prehensive scheme  like  that  on  which 
they  now  entered.  As  this  was  true  of  the 
architects,  it  was  even  more  applicable 
to  the  sculptors  and  painters,  most  of 

[265] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

whom  then  and  there  entered  upon  a 
phase  of  their  career  so  strange  to  them 
that  it  was  virtually  a  new  element  which 
came  into  their  life  and  their  practice. 

We  all  know  how  triumphantly  they 
succeeded,  for  though  the  buildings  have 
vanished,  though  the  sculptures  of  foun- 
tain, court,  and  terrace  are  gone,  though 
the  paintings  of  frieze  and  dome  have 
been  stripped  away,  their  memory  re- 
mains and  the  whole  vast  and  beautiful 
conception  still  serves  to  illuminate  the 
lives  of  all  those  who  were  permitted  to 
see  it. 

Yet  this  existing  and  physical  effect, 
however  vividly  it  is  retained  in  our 
memory  or  transmitted  by  description  to 
unborn  generations,  is  but  a  part,  and 
a  small  part,  of  the  service  which  this 
great  exposition  rendered  to  our  art.  Up 
to  that  time  we  had  seen  more  than  a 
century  of  art  effort  upon  these  shores. 
We  had  had  good  and  earnest  men, 

[  266  ] 


I 

.Wf'~ 
-fc---^- 


•33 

- 


I 


n 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

gifted  in  their  craft,  solicitous  to  implant 
its  beneficence  as  a  part  of  our  national 
life,  but  at  each  step  baffled  by  one  of 
the  very  principles  on  which  our  Consti- 
tution is  based,  that  forbids  the  encour- 
agement of  private  interest  at  the  public 
expense.  They  knew  not  less  than  we 
know  to-day  that  no  art  could  become 
stable  and  part  of  our  national  patrimony 
that  was  subject  to  private  encourage- 
ment alone.  They  saw  from  year  to  year 
the  fluctuations  of  individual  taste  as  they 
saw  our  painting  apparently  hopelessly 
involved  in  the  production  of  small  easel 
pictures  such  as  alone  the  comparatively 
small  and  generally  ill-lighted  houses 
that  we  built  could  harbour.  They  saw 
sculpture  for  the  same  reason  limited  to 
portrait  busts  or  the  rare  statue  of  the 
statesman  in  broadcloth.  They  knew  as 
well  as  we  do  now  that  in  the  more  fort- 
unate countries  of  the  Old  World  art 
had  been  kept  healthy  and  progressive 

[267] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

through  the  opportunities  afforded  to  the 
artist  to  try  his  mettle  with  themes  of 
larger  scope.  But  they  were  too  good 
Americans  to  wish,  even  if  they  could 
hope,  to  alter  our  prohibition  against 
special  encouragement  of  private  interest 
which  has  made  us  one  and  all  so  stur- 
dily individual. 

With  all  their  intelligence  and  their  un- 
questionable devotion  to  art,  however, 
these  men  never  foresaw  the  simple  solu- 
tion of  this  problem,  which  the  projectors 
of  the  White  City  solved  in  a  day.  We  can 
no  more  have  national  or  State  legislative 
grants  to  encourage  art  societies,  no 
matter  how  beneficent  or  educative  their 
work  may  be  considered,  than  by  the 
same  means  we  could  subsidise  a  line  of 
air-ships  to  the  moon;  but  there  is  noth- 
ing in  national  or  State  constitutions  to 
prevent  the  people  of  the  country  or  a 
given  State  from  purchasing  any  form  of 
art  that  they  may  desire  for  public  uses. 

[  268  ] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

Thus  the  corporative  and  local  organ- 
isation that  made  of  the  White  City  a 
national  undertaking  by  its  intelligence 
made  clear  and  by  its  action  established  the 
means  by  which  to-day  we  have  an  art  of 
the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people. 

Together  with  this  lesson  of  art  the  ex- 
position had  taught  our  land  the  duty 
of  civic  pride,  and  on  every  side  in  every 
locality  of  our  country  there  began  to 
arise  monuments  in  the  shape  of  court- 
houses, city  halls,  and  libraries  which 
were  all  touched  with  the  grace  of  art  by 
the  hand  of  the  architect,  whose  work  in 
many  cases  was  supplemented  by  that  of 
the  decorative  sculptor  and  the  mural 
painter.  Closely  following  the  work  in 
Chicago,  the  Congressional  Library  in 
Washington  offered  an  even  larger  field 
of  opportunity.  This  building,  which  re- 
mains until  to-day  the  greatest  exposition 
of  our  decorative  art,  is  at  the  same  time 
the  public  monument  of  the  United  States 

[269] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

which  receives  annually  the  largest  num- 
ber of  visitors. 

This  is  significant,  for  when  the  artist 
complains  of  the  sparse  attendance  at 
our  regular  art  exhibitions,  he  should 
reflect  that  if  the  average  exhibition  held 
works  of  as  much  interest  to  our  people 
as  these  decorations  afford  a  larger  at- 
tendance might  result.  There  is  much  to 
say  concerning  the  desirability  of  works 
which  possess  such  interest  making  more 
frequent  appearance  in  our  exhibitions, 
for  it  is  certain  that  when  the  American 
painter  is  not  engaged  in  producing  a 
mural  painting  or  an  illustration,  he  is 
too  much  disposed  to  limit  his  effort  to  a 
simple  study,  which  may  show  brilliant 
technical  qualities,  but  in  which  consid- 
erations of  composition  and  of  interest 
pertaining  to  the  subject  treated  are  not 
infrequently  absent. 

It  is  precisely  this  quality  of  public 
interest  that  our  artists  have  excited  in 

[270] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

their  work  for  public  buildings.  It  would 
appear  paradoxical  that  in  the  measure 
that  we  had  diminished  our  effort  to  please 
our  public,  we  had  succeeded  in  estab- 
lishing a  fuller  comprehension  of  the 
artist's  aim  on  the  part  of  the  people. 
An  exhibition  of  painting  and  sculpture 
has  always  as  some  part  of  its  reason  for 
existence  a  desire  to  attract  the  public, 
however  much  our  modern  exhibitions, 
which  appear  to  exist  largely  that  we  may 
show  our  fellow-craftsmen  how  cleverly 
we  can  paint  or  model,  may  fail  in  this 
endeavour. 

But,  to  continue  the  paradox,  the  deco- 
rative sculptor  or  the  mural  painter  has 
even  more  preoccupation  of  definite  tech- 
nical laws,  different  from  but  more  ex- 
acting than  those  which  the  painter  or 
sculptor  of  unrelated  work  obeys.  The 
decorator's  work  must  in  line  and  mass 
be  governed  by  its  architectural  setting, 
the  artist  is  no  longer  free  to  do  what  he 

[271] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

will,  he  must  do  what  best  suits  his  en- 
vironment. Not  until  this  law  is  obeyed 
is  he  at  liberty  to  think  of  his  subject, 
or  rather,  his  subject  must  be  conceived 
in  accordance  with  these  architectural 
requirements.  We  must  first  please  our 
architecture,  if  I  may  so  use  the  phrase, 
before  we  please  our  public. 

There  is  something  so  inherently  noble 
in  the  solidity  of  construction,  in  the 
proportion  and  mass  of  a  building,  that 
subjects  trivial  in  character,  obscure  or 
confused  in  conception  are  precluded 
from  a  decorator's  selection,  and  his 
theme  possesses  greater  general  or  typi- 
cal interest  for  this  reason.  It  is  certain 
that  so  far  in  this  country  wherever  the 
decorator  has  placed  his  work  he  has 
never  failed  to  find  an  audience,  where 
sometimes  in  the  same  cities  the  museums 
and  art  exhibitions  excite  but  scant  in- 
terest. 

This,  which,  as  already  noted,  is  the 

[272] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

case  with  the  Congressional  Library,  is 
equally  true  in  Boston,  where  before  the 
work  of  Sargent,  Abbey,  and  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  in  the  Public  Library,  can 
always  be  seen  a  throng  of  interested 
visitors.  Nor  in  all  these  instances  is  the 
attraction  due  to  the  novelty  of  seeing 
our  public  buildings  made  beautiful  by 
the  hand  of  the  artist,  for  these  edifices 
have  long  ceased  to  be  considered  new 
in  the  changes  which  each  day  brings. 
In  the  case  of  some  of  our  great  hotels, 
like  the  Waldorf-Astoria  or  the  Knicker- 
bocker, in  New  York,  which  have  been 
decorated,  it  has  long  been  the  custom 
to  have  special  guides  to  conduct  visitors 
through  the  house  to  view  the  interior, 
quite  as  the  tourist  abroad  is  conducted 
through  the  palaces  of  Fontainebleau  or 
Versailles.  It  is  also  interesting,  as  a 
proof  of  the  commercial  utility  of  art,  to 
quote  a  statement  made  by  the  proprietor 
of  one  of  the  largest  of  these  hotels,  to 

[273] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

the  effect  that  the  decorations  therein  had 
attracted  more  business  and  had  cost  com- 
paratively the  least  of  any  of  its  features. 

The  list  of  civic  and  State  buildings 
which  have  been  made  significant  by  the 
hand  of  the  painter  and  sculptor  in  the 
past  twenty  years  would  be  too  long  for 
inclusion  here,  but  the  desire  to  express 
our  faith  in  our  institutions  and  our  pride 
in  their  development  by  such  embellish- 
ment is  not  confined  to  any  one  section  of 
the  country.  State  capitols  at  points  as 
far  apart  as  St.  Paul,  Minnesota,  and 
Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania,  have  been  so 
decorated,  while  the  court-houses  and 
city  halls  of  many  large  and  small  cities 
have  seen  new  and  more  definite  meaning 
given  to  the  architect's  expression  of  the 
civic  sentiment  of  their  various  localities, 
by  the  added  precision  which  pictorial 
representation  can  best  lend. 

Here  we  find  probably  the  reason  for 
the  public  interest  which  our  mural 

[274] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

painting  has  never  failed  to  elicit.  We 
have  long  been  accustomed  to  express 
our  sense  of  civic,  State,  or  even  commer- 
cial dignity  by  the  character  of  the  build- 
ings we  erect.  In  these  later  years  with 
the  progress  of  our  art  these  monuments 
have  become  increasingly  beautiful  and 
appropriate  in  design  as  the  architect  has 
gained  in  authority  and  executive  ability. 
But  at  the  best,  the  architect  works  in  a 
material  that  is  rebellious  to  a  special  or 
local  expression.  It  is  not  alone  the  mar- 
ble or  granite  of  which  his  building  is 
composed  that  necessarily  limits  his 
effort,  but  all  the  precedents  established, 
all  the  rules  by  which  his  expression  is 
governed. 

The  American  architect  may  be  asked 
to  design  a  building  for  a  locality  which 
has  a  special  industry  or  a  local  history 
of  its  own,  but  he  is  forced  to  work  with 
the  same  material  and  embody  his  con- 
ception according  to  rules  established 

[275] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

from  time  immemorial,  in  much  the  same 
manner  as  does  the  architect  of  to-day 
in  London,  Paris,  or  Berlin.  Therefore  he 
provides  for  this  special  locality  a  monu- 
ment which,  dignified  and  worthy  though 
it  may  be,  could  be  as  well  erected  in  any 
other  place  in  America  or  Europe,  for 
all  that  it  would  definitely  express  to  the 
inhabitants  of  this  given  locality  of  a 
character  that  was  distinctly  their  own. 
This  is  not  a  defect  in  our  architecture, 
to  the  mind  of  one  who  believes  in  tradi- 
tions; on  the  contrary,  there  is  something 
uplifting,  which  appeals  to  the  imagina- 
tion, to  think  that  scattered  over  our 
vast  territory  are  many  beautiful  build- 
ings, erected  in  consonance  with  a  pre- 
scribed order  which,  encircling  the  globe, 
links  our  new  land  to  the  nations  of  re- 
motest antiquity,  and  makes  our  archi- 
tect working  in  New  York,  Chicago,  or 
Denver  a  direct  descendant  of  him  who 
reared  the  Parthenon. 

[276] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

But  if  we  acknowledge  our  debt  to  the 
past,  the  present  is  nevertheless  with  us, 
and  we  can  heartily  approve  of  the  citi- 
zen who,  elected  as  a  commissioner  for  a 
public  building  by  the  votes  of  his  fellows, 
desires  to  secure  for  his  town-hall  or  local 
court-house  some  expression  of  the  typi- 
cal character  or  the  history  of  the  locality. 

I  am  here  reminded  of  the  description 
by  one  of  our  best-known  architects  of 
his  missionary  effort  to  instruct  the  build- 
ing commission  of  the  capitol  of  one  of 
our  States  of  the  possibilities  of  mural 
decoration.  For  this  purpose  he  had 
taken  this  commission  to  Washington 
and  had  conducted  them  to  the  Con- 
gressional Library.  The  members  of  the 
commission  were  much  impressed.  Their 
chairman  and  spokesman  happened  to  be 
a  rough  farmer,  untouched  up  to  that 
time  by  any  influence  of  art,  endowed 
with  shrewd  common-sense  and  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  constituency  which  he  repre- 

[277] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

sented  in  the  legislative  body  of  his 
State.  After  a  brief  consultation  with  his 
fellow-commissioners,  he  addressed  the 
architect:  "Do  you  mean  to  tell  us  that 
we  can  have  this  sort  of  thing  in  our  eap- 
itol  at  home  without  robbing  our  tax- 
payers?" He  was  assured  that  this  could 
be  done,  and  the  architect,  prepared  for 
the  occasion,  told  them  how  little  had 
been  the  amount  expended  for  the  dec- 
orations of  the  library  compared  with 
the  total  cost  of  the  building,  the  exact 
amount  of  the  appropriation  he  would 
need  to  carry  out  his  scheme  for  the 
embellishment  of  the  new  capitol,  and  the 
proportion  that  it  would  bear  to  the 
general  tax  levy  of  the  State.  "I  should  of 
course  need  a  special  appropriation  for 
this  purpose,"  concluded  the  architect. 
"Well,  we  will  give  it  to  you,"  answered 
the  chairman,  speaking  for  his  colleagues, 
"but  meanwhile  you  have  a  general  ap- 
propriation which  we  thought  of  using 

[278] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

for  elevators.  Go  ahead  and  spend  that 
to  begin  this  work  at  once.  For  my  part 
I  had  rather  see  myself  and  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  legislature  back  there  walk 
upstairs  the  rest  of  our  lives  than  miss 
having  this  sort  of  thing  about  us." 
This  again  is  art  for  the  people,  this 
again  goes  back  to  the  very  birth  of  art 
and  follows  the  long  chain  that,  with 
broken  links  here  and  there,  has  bound 
the  best  service  of  the  artist  close  to  his 
fellow-workers  in  the  field  of  life  since 
time  began.  Francis  I  of  France  ren- 
dered, in  a  certain  way,  a  sorry  service  to 
art  when  he  induced  the  great  painters 
of  Italy  to  furnish  him  works  by  them, 
which  then  for  the  first  time  were  con- 
ceived and  executed  without  relation  to 
the  surroundings  in  which  they  were  to 
be  seen.  So  far  as  this  king  was  con- 
cerned, he  promptly  learned  better,  and 
as  promptly  induced  the  artists  to  come 
to  France,  where  they  executed  the  dec- 

[279] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

orations  still  in  place  in  Fontainebleau, 
where  we  still  go  to  study  and  admire. 

For  there  reside  in  work,  thus  done  for 
a  special  place,  lit  by  a  light  for  which  the 
artist  has  suited  his  work,  and  enhanced 
by  the  setting  which  the  architect  has 
provided,  qualities  which  the  unrelated 
picture  may  possess,  but  which  are  liable 
to  be  diminished  or  lost  by  the  accident 
of  its  placing  in  unharmonious  surround- 
ings. These  are  technical  questions  upon 
which  any  artist  may  ponder,  though  with 
the  exception  of  the  comparative  few 
who  have  studied  and  profited  by  the 
conditions  of  mural  painting,  we  have  one 
and  all  become  calloused  in  our  sense  of 
harmony  by  the  practice  of  showing  our 
work  in  the  chance  surroundings  and 
inharmonious  conditions  of  art  exhibi- 
tions. A  general  exhibition  is  for  the 
artist  a  necessary  evil,  imposed  by  the 
essentially  modern  habit  of  bringing  to- 
gether examples  of  art  conceived  by  many 

[280] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

minds,  executed  in  the  most  diverse  man- 
ner, and  then  placed  upon  the  walls  of 
our  galleries  with  only  so  much  of  har- 
monious grouping  as  the  diversity  of  aim 
and  accomplishment  permits.  The  first 
examples  of  this  habit  only  date  from  the 
period  when  it  became  the  custom  to 
collect  works  of  art  detached  from  or 
unrelated  to  their  designed  surroundings, 
and  the  general  exhibitions  were  first 
held  only  about  two  hundred  years  ago — 
truly  a  modern  habit  when  we  consider 
the  centuries  of  art  effort. 
The  work  of  any  artist  would  therefore 
gain  technically  if  he  could  know  its 
final  disposition  as  regards  its  placing,  the 
direction  and  quantity  of  light  in  which 
it  was  to  be  seen,  and  the  colour  and 
scale  of  its  surroundings,  all  conditions 
which  he  can  and  does  instinctively  regu- 
late in  his  studio  during  the  production 
of  his  work,  though  he  is  forced  to  leave 
all  these  desirable  and  beneficial  adjuncts 

[281] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

to  his  effort  to  the  hand  of  chance  when 
once  his  work  leaves  him. 

But  it  is  what  I  may  call  the  moral  effect 
of  our  art  upon  the  people  which  has 
been  enhanced  by  certain  groups  of  deco- 
rative paintings  or  single  examples  that 
have  become  as  much  a  part  of  existing 
public  buildings  as  are  the  walls  of  which 
they  are  made.  For  there  has  come  with 
them  the  sense  of  possession,  and  the 
average  voter  who  has  had  his  part  in 
the  appropriation  for  a  building  of  this 
description  looks  at  a  mural  painting 
that  serves  for  its  embellishment  with 
another  eye  and  another  disposition  of 
mind  than  he  would  if  he  stood  before 
some  example  of  art  owned  by  a  private 
individual  whose  vote  was  no  more  influ- 
ential than  his,  but  whose  wealth  was 
greater. 

A  few  months  ago  I  stood  in  one  of  the 
court-rooms  of  the  Luzerne  County  Court- 
House,  at  Wilkes-Barre,  Pennsylvania, 

[282] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

waiting  as  some  workmen  removed  the 
scaffolding  before  a  decorative  panel 
which  I  had  painted  and  of  which,  as  it 
had  just  been  fixed  in  place,  I  desired  to 
judge  the  effect.  As  the  painting  was 
finally  uncovered  there  strolled  into  the 
room  one  of  the  typical  miners  of  the 
section,  bearing  many  marks  of  his  toil 
upon  his  person,  despite  the  change 
from  his  working-clothes,  gaunt  and 
loose-limbed — in  a  word,  the  last  person 
in  the  world  from  whom  I  should  have 
expected  a  word  of  encouragement  for 
my  effort,  of  influence  upon  my  art.  To- 
gether we  looked  at  the  work  upon  which 
I  had  passed  many  anxious  months,  he 
not  having  the  slightest  suspicion  that  I 
was  its  author,  and  each  of  us  studying 
it  from  very  different  stand-points  un- 
doubtedly. At  last  after  an  apparently 
minute  inspection,  during  which  I  trust 
that  he  discovered  several  features  of 
the  work  that  were  typical  of  the  region 

[283] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

and  its  interests,  he  turned  to  me  and 
exclaimed,  with  an  oath,  "Well,  I  sup- 
pose that  picture  makes  me  a  bit  poorer, 
for  it's  paid  for  by  the  people  of  this 
county,  but  somehow  Tm  glad  it's  there." 
I  let  him  depart  without  informing  him 
that  I  had  painted  the  panel,  but  I  have 
since  regretted  that  I  did  so,  for  I  might 
have  told  him  with  truth  that,  coming 
as  it  did,  his  appreciation  counted  for 
more  than  that  of  critics  more  informed. 
I  could  also  have  quieted  any  fears  that 
he  might  have  entertained  as  to  the  cost 
of  decorations  of  this  character  by  quot- 
ing one  of  the  most  influential,  far-seeing, 
and  devoted  of  the  men  who  have  de- 
voted their  lives  to  building  up  an  art 
interest  in  towns  which  but  for  their 
activity  and  intelligence  would  have  re- 
mained for  years  to  come  without  its 
civilising  influence. 

This  man  was  engaged  in  a  campaign 
that  aimed   at  securing  a  large  endow- 

[284] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

ment  for  the  city  art  museum  which,  as 
it  was  to  be  levied  from  public  funds, 
demanded  a  popular  vote  from  the  citi- 
zens. He  therefore  undertook  to  instruct 
his  public  concerning  the  benefit  to  be 
derived  from  this  measure,  and  in  a 
series  of  popular  talks  addressed  to  all 
classes  of  society  his  missionary  labours 
took  him  to  all  descriptions  of  places, 
including  as  a  last  resort  the  bar-rooms 
and  beer  saloons.  In  these  last  he  used 
a  most  convincing  argument  in  proving 
by  exact  calculation  that  to  furnish  an 
endowment  of  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  a  year  the  man  who 
was  taxed  on  one  thousand  dollars  of 
property  would  be  required  to  pay  twenty 
cents  a  year — the  price  of  four  glasses  of 
beer.  I  presume  that  my  Wilkes-Barre 
miner  may  have  contributed  indirectly 
about  two  cents  toward  the  decoration 
of  his  court-house,  but  it  was  sufficient 
to  give  him  the  right  to  consider  a  noble 

[2851 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

building  and  all  that  it  contained  as  his 
own — sufficient  for  an  American  artist  to 
work  for  him  and  be  proud  of  the  em- 
ploy! 

Of  my  own  first  works  in  decoration  I 
need  say  but  little,  for,  like  nearly  all  our 
men,  I  entered  the  field  with  a  better 
preparation  of  hope  than  of  experience. 
It  is  true  that  I  had  enjoyed  more  training 
than  some  of  my  colleagues,  for  the  year 
passed  with  Mr.  La  Farge  had  given  me 
the  opportunity  of  solving  a  number  of 
minor  decorative  problems.  For  that  mat- 
ter, among  my  compatriots,  comrades  of 
an  earlier  time  in  Paris,  I  remember  none 
save  Saint-Gaudens  (who  of  course  was 
not  a  painter)  who  showed  the  same  in- 
terest as  I  in  work  of  a  decorative  char- 
acter, although  in  the  years  of  my  sojourn 
there  France  saw  a  revival  of  interest  in 
mural  painting  which  has  been  as  pro- 
ductive there  as  has  its  new  birth  with 
us.  Some  of  the  best  examples  of  Puvis 

[286] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

de  Chavannes  saw  the  light  in  these  years, 
and  as  I  have  already  related,  the  com- 
pletion of  Paul  Baudry's  decoration  for 
the  New  Opera  was  hailed  as  a  national 
event. 

Works  like  these,  as  I  look  back,  un- 
doubtedly gave  the  type  and  showed  the 
possibility  of  our  effort  here  later  on,  but 
at  the  time  of  their  production  I  knew 
no  one  in  my  student  world,  with  the 
exception  of  myself,  who  was  sufficiently 
optimistic  to  believe  that  in  our  time  we 
should  see  an  effort  similar  at  least  in 
aim,  gain  foothold,  develop,  and  grow  as 
it  has  in  this  country. 

I  am  minded,  however,  that  of  the  num- 
bers of  students,  and  as  well  the  artists 
of  my  country,  comparatively  few  have 
the  desire  to  devote  their  effort  to  mural 
painting.  In  fact  to-day  in  our  exhibi- 
tions and  among  artists  in  general  the 
work  of  the  decorator  is  looked  upon  as 
a  thing  apart — I  had  almost  said,  a  spe- 

[287] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

cialisation  that  hardly  enters  the  realm  of 
painting. 

If  my  argument  has  been  followed,  how- 
ever, I  think  that  I  have  shown  that  until 
two  hundred  years  ago  nearly  all  painting 
and  most  of  the  sculpture  was  executed  for 
a  special  place,  subject  to  the  conditions 
under  which  the  work  was  to  be  seen, 
much  of  it  even  being  absolutely  executed 
in  place,  though  our  habit  of  collecting 
has  since  wrested  many  of  these  works 
from  their  primitive  setting,  sometimes 
very  much  to  their  disadvantage.  Other 
times,  other  manners  may  be  urged 
against  any  desire  to  see  these  original  con- 
ditions re-established.  Undoubtedly  our 
modern  habit  of  building  our  homes,  and 
even  our  public  buildings,  not  for  all 
time  but  with  an  acceptance  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  not  remote  future  change, 
militates  against  a  renewal  of  this  ancient 
habit.  But  I  can  hardly  imagine  that  an 
artist  exists  who  would  not  be  glad  to  see 

[288] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

his  work  placed  where  it  would  be  un- 
disturbed for  five  years  in  surroundings 
of  his  own  choice,  or  who,  having  the 
opportunity  of  so  placing  his  work,  would 
not  be  glad  to  modify  his  production  to 
harmonise  with  such  conditions.  This 
appears  almost  elementary,  for  it  is  thus 
that  the  artist  executes  his  work  in 
his  own  studio,  carefully  removing  from 
its  vicinity  other  works  of  his  own 
that  in  tone  or  colour  fail  to  harmonise 
with  it. 

Moreover,  there  are  certain  signs  of 
these  later  times  that  show  that  the  artist 
is  waking  to  the  absurdity  of  carefully  con- 
sidering these  questions  during  the  execu- 
tion of  his  work  and  then  launching  it  on 
the  troubled  sea  of  chance  in  our  crowded 
exhibitions.  Note  the  prevalence  of  what 
are  called  "one-man  exhibitions,"  where 
the  artist  shows  only  his  own  work,  each 
example  carefully  placed  so  that  one  may 
harmonise  with  the  other,  with  ample 

[289] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

space  between  so  that  no  jarring  note  of 
colour,  no  conflict  may  ensue. 

When  some  of  us  advocate  the  estab- 
lishment of  great  exhibitions  like  the 
Paris  Salon  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  it 
is  a  compromise,  a  necessary  evil  that  we 
would  bring  about  to  gain  the  greater 
good  of  showing  our  public  the  measure 
of  our  achievement,  and  by  this  means 
advancing  the  day  when  our  native  art 
may  be  appreciated  and  properly  en- 
couraged by  some  diversion  of  the  in- 
terest by  which  our  people  are  virtually 
keeping  alive  the  art  of  half  the  world — 
outside  of  our  own  country. 

Even  in  thus  planning,  we  are  dreaming, 
practical  dreamers  that  we  are,  of  having 
galleries  so  spacious  that  all  works  ex- 
hibited may  be  properly  shown,  so  that 
our  present  inharmonious  grouping  may 
be  reduced  to  order  and  the  day  of  pict- 
ure crowding  picture,  frame  touching 
frame,  with  sculpture  huddled  in  spaces 
[  290] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

wherever  room  can  be  found,  may  cease. 
Nor  does  my  advocacy  for  all  possible 
consideration  of  the  work  of  art  as  a 
part  of  a  definite  setting  in  any  way 
preclude  the  participation  of  the  painter 
of  any  form  of  easel  picture  in  this  happy 
revival  of  ancient  conditions.  Time  was 
when  the  family  portraits  were  placed  in 
the  framing  of  the  panelled  room,  and 
to-day  if  the  portrait  painter  would  ask 
his  client  for  a  definite  place  in  his 
house  and  then  paint  the  portrait  to  fit 
that  place,  in  tone  and  composition  as 
well  as  in  size,  both  the  artist  and  the 
sitter  would  gain  by  this  return  to  earlier 
methods.  This  in  fact  has  been  done 
occasionally  within  recent  years  since  the 
fashion  of  "period"  rooms  has  set  in, 
and  always  with  happy  result. 

Again  a  large  part  of  modern  mural 
painting  has  been  distinguished  by  the 
use  of  landscape  as  an  important  adjunct; 
landscape  treated  as  none  of  the  older 

[291] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

decorators  embodied  it  in  their  work. 
There  are  few  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes's 
works,  for  instance,  from  which  the  figures 
could  not  be  removed,  still  leaving  a 
beautiful  tapestry-like  decoration  com- 
posed of  landscape  pure  and  simple. 

Little  use  has  so  far  been  made  by  our 
landscape  painters  of  this  new  field  of 
effort,  or  rather  our  architects  are  so 
governed  by  precedent  that  the  service 
of  landscape,  decoratively  composed  and 
painted  with  observance  of  architectural 
conditions,  has  not  been  called  to  perform 
the  part  for  which  it  is  eminently  fitted. 
That  this  could,  and  probably  will,  be 
done  seems  evident,  and  there  as  always 
the  work  of  the  artist  would  gain,  as 
every  human  effort  gains,  by  ceasing  to 
be  unrelated  and  becoming  a  part  of  a 
whole  where  every  element  is  combined, 
each  part  helping  the  other,  even  as 
humanity  from  the  first  has  found  it 
necessary  to  combine  individual  efforts 

[292] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

to  make  more  effective  the  general  effort 
of  civilisation. 

It  is  through  such  means,  it  appears  to 
me,  that  art  can  best  force  an  entrance 
into  the  lives  of  our  American  people, 
who  have  been  forced  in  the  past  by 
material  conditions  to  conquer  a  foot- 
hold on  a  new  continent  and  whose  insti- 
tutions were  established  by  a  race  which 
had  banished  art  from  its  scheme  of  life, 
from  an  idea,  conceived  in  error,  that  it 
was  merely  a  dependence  of  a  religion 
against  which  they  rose  in  revolt. 

But  art  is  inevitable,  for  man  craves 
its  service  the  moment  that  he  pauses 
in  his  labour  and  looks  to  the  beauty  in 
the  world  about  him.  I  have  described 
how  it  is  beginning  to  infiltrate,  slowly  but 
surely,  from  the  ancient  source  of  all  art, 
through  the  embellishment  of  our  build- 
ings and  the  assistance  of  the  "mother 
of  arts,"  into  the  lives  of  the  most  humble. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  our  people — 

[293] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

this  is  not  an  over-statement — already 
transact  the  business  of  their  lives  in 
law-courts,  town-halls,  or  other  public 
buildings  in  this  country,  in  surroundings 
which  have  been  touched  by  the  grace  of 
art.  Of  these  how  many,  think  you, 
can  we  attract  to  our  museums  or  art 
exhibitions,  except  on  rare  occasions  and 
with  a  somewhat  weary  desire  to  acquire 
a  taste  for  art,  from  which  nearly  every 
element  of  their  daily  life  or  past  ances- 
try has  kept  them,  as  from  a  thing  apart, 
the  concern  of  a  few.  But  it  is  the  man 
who  reads  as  he  runs  who  is  affected  per- 
haps almost  unconsciously  by  the  art  thus 
given  over  to  the  people,  which  has  be- 
come their  property,  and  this  eventually 
they  will  care  for  as  a  precious  possession 
of  their  own.  The  Greek  utensils  of  house- 
hold life,  which  we  treasure,  for  their  de- 
sign, in  our  museums  along  with  the  no- 
bler sculpture  of  their  greater  artists,  came 
into  being  and  into  daily  use  from  an  ap- 

[294] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR   FUTURE 

preciation  of  beauty  that  had  grown,  not 
from  the  establishment  of  museums  or  art 
exhibitions,  but  from  works  of  art  that 
were  wrought  for  the  multitude  and  that 
were  placed  where  the  man  paving  the 
street  or  entering  the  public  bath  could 
see  them. 

Our  modern  conditions  demand  our 
museums  and  our  exhibitions,  but  it  is 
significant  in  all  our  cities  that  of  those 
who  visit  them,  the  days  when  they  are 
thronged  by  visitors,  on  the  free  days, 
the  great  majority  are  our  transplanted 
citizens  of  Italian  birth.  JThey  have  been 
brought  up  under  precisely  the  same 
conditions  as  those  which  I  believe  are 
being  slowly  established  here,  where  the 
walls  of  their  public  buildings  carry  to 
them  the  message  of  art,  where  the  statue 
in  the  public  place,  the  fountain  at  the 
street  corner  speak  to  them  in  the  same 
universal  and  appealing  language. 

My  miner  in  Wilkes-Barre  was  well  on 

[295] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

his  way  to  appreciate  the  best  service  that 
art  can  render,  as  was  the  farmer  chair- 
man of  the  legislative  committee  which 
had  been  given  the  power  to  render  the 
mute  walls  of  their  State  capitol  eloquent 
of  the  history  of  the  past  and  the  aspira- 
tions for  the  future  for  their  whole  com- 
monwealth; but  I  doubt  if  either  of  them 
could  have  been  lured  into  a  museum  or 
an  art  exhibition. 

This  in  broad  general  lines  appears  to 
me  to  be  the  present  state  of  the  arts  here 
at  home.  Time  lacks  for  a  more  particular 
view  of  all  its  various  manifestations  of 
which  I  have  been  the  fortunate  witness 
in  my  life,  but  upon  the  conditions 
stated  I  base  my  hope  for  the  greater 
diffusion  and  the  continued  progress  of 
all  the  arts  of  design  until  they  have 
become  an  integral  part  of  our  national 
life.  I  trust  that  I  may  say  that  these  con- 
clusions are  the  fruit  of  much  thought  and 
considerable  experience — and  I  am  glad  to 

[296] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

add  that  the  hope  declared  is  of  the  most 
optimistic  description. 

There  remain  to  be  expressed:  first  of 
all  my  sincere  gratitude  that  I  should 
have  been  permitted,  under  the  condi- 
tions of  the  Scammon  foundation,  to  ex- 
press these  views  publicly;  my  equally 
sincere  thanks  for  the  attention  accorded 
me  by  the  students  and  members  of  the 
Art  Institute  at  the  time  of  the  original 
delivery  of  these  lectures ;  and  some  word, 
not  of  apology  but  of  explanation,  that 
the  measure  in  which,  under  the  circum- 
stances, it  appeared  that  I  could  be  of 
the  most  service  to  students  and  to  those 
interested  in  the  problems  of  art  was  by 
the  frank  recital  of  my  own  experiences 
and  the  frequent  use  of  the  personal  pro- 
noun I. 

To  a  larger  audience  let  me  reiterate 
that  what  the  youngest  as  well  as  the  oldest 
servant  of  the  arts  in  the  United  States 
has  before  him  is  the  task  of  raising  not 

[297] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

only  the  standard  of  our  work,  but  of 
our  aim.  We  are  yet  too  much  children, 
pleased  with  a  new  toy  and  too  prone  to 
believe  that  the  end  is  attained  when  we 
are  only  fairly  on  the  way.  In  this  our 
technical  acquirements  are  the  tools  of 
our  trade,  and  we  cannot  have  them  too 
sharp  and  keen  to  carry  out  the  work 
we  have  to  do,  but  we  must  first  plan  our 
work  and  for  that  something  more  is  re- 
quired than  correctness  of  eye  and  facil- 
ity of  hand. 

Therefore  every  element  that  goes  to 
the  making  of  character,  every  force  that 
we  can  bring  to  bear  to  widen  our  knowl- 
edge will  help  us  to  know  our  possibilities 
and  do  something  to  break  down  the 
barriers  of  our  limitations.  The  great 
artists  of  the  past  were  men  of  broad 
sympathies,  and  the  man  of  to-day  must 
not  expect  the  world  to  come  to  him,  but 
like  them  must  go  out  to  the  life  about 
him,  share  in  its  interests,  endeavour  to 

[298] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  OUR  FUTURE 

choose  between  those  that  are  transitory 
and  local  and  those  that  are  typical  and 
human,  and  translate  these  last  into  the 
language  of  art.  The  world  is  more  filled 
with  thinking  men  and  women  to-day  than 
it  was  in  the  most  brilliant  epochs  of  the 
old  days  of  art,  and  they  will  listen — only 
you  must  have  something  to  say. 

You  may  say  it  by  a  well-designed 
chair  or  a  monumental  building,  by  a 
modest  drawing  or  a  vast  canvas,  by  a 
well-modelled  door-knob  or  a  colossal 
group — great  artists  whom  we  honour 
as  of  one  family  have  done  all  these 
things  in  the  past — and  you  may  win 
honour  in  their  doing,  and  find  much 
joy  by  the  way. 

The  way  is  long  at  the  best,  there  is  no 
greater  lesson  to  learn,  and  to  impart  in 
turn,  in  this  land  of  quick  and  partial 
results,  and  it  is  one  to  which  fortune 
is  denied,  for  fortune  never  comes  to  the 
man  who  works  with  his  hands.  But  it  has 

[299] 


A  PAINTER'S  PROGRESS 

more  gratification  than  any  life  I  know. 
It  is  well  to  acknowledge  this,  for  if  you 
have  the  vocation  and  the  whole  world 
asserted  the  contrary,  you  could  not  be 
dissuaded  from  it. 

"This  is  the  life  we  have  chosen;  well, 
the  choice  was  mad,  but  I  should  make 
it  again";  was  the  profession  of  faith 
made  to  me  by  that  true  artist  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson. 

And  though  the  way  be  long,  we  may 
take  heart  of  grace  in  reflecting  that  art 
knows  no  age,  that  to-day  or  fifty  years 
hence  its  inexhaustible  problems  will  lure 
you  on  as  they  did  Titian,  who,  dying  at 
ninety-nine,  felt  that  he  was  on  the  point 
of  doing  something  worthy,  or,  as  they 
lured  that  other  great,  little  artist,  the 
Japanese  Hokusai,  who  warns  his  admir- 
ers that  all  the  work  he  did  before  seventy 
was  merely  childish  effort,  and  that  before 
ninety  he  could  hardly  hope  to  do  any- 
thing that  was  worth  their  attention. 

[300] 


OUR  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE 

And  so,  with  this  cheerful  outlook  we 
may  separate,  each  intent  upon  doing 
his  best  in  his  own  way,  youth  to  the 
school  and  the  future  beyond,  I  back  to 
my  studio,  with  something  more  behind 
me,  but  not  without  abiding  hope  in  the 
future — and  so — courage — and  farewell. 


[301] 


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